Gigabyte G-MAX NB-1401: Beauty in the Simplest Terms
by Andrew Ku on September 23, 2003 11:14 PM EST- Posted in
- Laptops
Features — Software
The only specific Gigabyte software that comes of any mention is the use of Xpress Recovery in shipping models of the G-MAX NB-1401. Gigabyte’s effort into this is all about making the customer experience easier. They figure that most users easily lose their recovery CDs and manuals by the time they really need to go through a fresh install of their OS; and when viruses hit, the amount of effort going into reinstalling all the drivers is a pain. Xpress Recovery is part of Xpress3 technology of Gigabyte, which they describe as:Xpress Recovery is the revolutionary BIOS feature designed for hard drive data security. With Xpress Recovery, user is able to backup all his system files and personal files such as mp3 songs, images, word documents or movie files that were stored in the hard drive into a single image file. The image file is securely stored in the hard drive's hidden sector which is undetectable or destroyed by any utility or virus today. If user experienced system crashed, all he has to do is to call up the Xpress Recovery feature during system boot up, and with few simple steps the system is recovered back as original.
Upon the boot up screen, users usually hit F2 to enter the BIOS, as is the case with the NB-1401. However, upon pressing F9, users enter the Xpress Recovery console, which is comprised of two buttons, very big buttons at that. The green exit is to recover back to the original shipping condition of the system, and the red button is to exit.
Click to enlarge.
You may be wondering how the program can restore, because the necessary information to perform such an operation requires disk space. Well, when you get into a disk management utility, you can see that the space of Xpress Recovery is actually pre-allotted to the program on shipping models. You can choose to remove Xpress Recovery by formatting or deleting the unpartitioned space that Xpress Recovery uses. This will end up giving you more space, but you will lose the capacity to use Xpress Recovery down the line.
Click to enlarge.
This is a nice feature, but it would have been nice to see Gigabyte bundle a hard copy of a recovery CD, just as a back up.
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DerProfi - Thursday, July 15, 2004 - link
My biggest beef with Gigabyte is that their RMA & support process totally sucks. Ever try getting warranty service from them? It's painful. There are no 800-numbers to call, no easy way to track the status of your RMA, and when you return your busted product to them (at your own expense) you have to include a check to cover their return shipping charges! I think I'll stick with IBM for my notebook needs.Alt - Saturday, September 27, 2003 - link
I noticed on the Gigabyte site that they appear to have no US resellers.Alt - Saturday, September 27, 2003 - link
artifex - Wednesday, September 24, 2003 - link
two things:1) "If you are looking for a compliment to your daily personal computer" - you mean complEment?
2) "This is more of a matter of semantics, and while we are talking in Chinese, we would prefer the Chinese term of 'swai', which translates to 'cool, hip, with-it', as well as other connotations." - maybe it's the sort of thing where it's not really cool if it calls itself cool?
Anonymous User - Tuesday, September 23, 2003 - link
"The big difference is the top of the laptop, which features the Chinese character equivalent of 'extreme.'"And so a new saying was born: The weird squiggly thing is for XTREME!