There's plenty of storage in the Turbobook GX600. It packs a 320GB hard drive, which is ample space to house most people's collection of films and games. For reference, the average standard definition DivX movie is approximately 0.7GB, while games such as F.E.A.R. take up around 7.5GB. If you do run out of space, you can always back up your data to a separate USB hard drive or via the DVD rewriter nestling in the left side of the laptop.
MSI also includes a 1.3-megapixel webcam just above the screen, and an optional Freeview TV tuner, although our review sample didn't include the latter. It did, however, include all the usual gubbins you'd expect from a laptop sporting the Intel Centrino badge, most notably a wireless network adaptor that supports 802.11b/g and the high-speed Draft-N wireless protocols. Wired Internet is also supported and is of the Gigabit (1,000Mbps) variety -- not the slower, more common 10/100Mbps type.
Software is relatively scarce, but you do get a copy of Windows Vista Home Premium edition, which may or may not be a consolation depending on your view on the OS. We happen to think it's not as bad as many people make out.
Performance
With a name like 'MSI Turbobook GX600', you'd expect this laptop to be brutally quick. It's by no means the quickest we've seen, particularly when it comes to gaming, but it's quick enough to spar with the fastest Centrino laptops on the market. It achieved a PCMark 2005 score of 5,409 when running in standard mode, and a far more impressive 6,070 once we launched into turbo. That's not too far off the 6,616 achieved by the more expensive Alienware Area-51 M9750.
Its 3D gaming ability isn't as impressive, though. It scored 3,807 in 3DMark 2006, and hitting the turbo button didn't make much difference -- with turbo enabled, it scored 3,870. For reference, the current crop of high-end gaming laptops will score approximately twice as much as this.
Battery life on the Turbobook GX600 isn't particularly inspiring, but then we never expected it to be. It lasted 1 hour 5 minutes in our intensive Battery Eater test -- a figure you can also expect to achieve should you decide to run CPU-intensive applications while away from the mains.
With all this talk of red-hot turbo action, there must be a mention of temperature. We're pleased to say the laptop doesn't get particularly hot or noisy. The temperature increases once you hit the turbo button, and while we don't recommend using it on your lap, it won't exactly burn a hole through your table. System boot times were the same regardless of whether the turbo button was switched on or off.
Conclusion
The Turbobook GX600 is a mixed bag. It's great for anyone who does CPU-intensive work, as its overclocking feature works brilliantly and vastly improves core performance. Its graphics performance is rather average, however, so anyone who plays games might be better off with an Alienware M9750 or Dell XPS M1730.
Edited by Jason Jenkins
Additional editing by Shannon Doubleday
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