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GammaTech Durabook D14RM

Katherine Stevenson — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 16:30:00 -0600

Takes a lickin’...

GammaTech’s Durabook D14RM is the antidote for folks who are really rough on their hardware. The notebook’s gray and black magnesium-alloy case, complete with black rubberized corners, not only makes the rig look burly, but also serves to protect it from aggressive manhandling.

GammaTech says the notebook complies with MIL-STD-810F guidelines for ruggedness, so we put those claims to the test. We “accidentally” knocked the D14RM off a desk when the machine was open and running a program, dropped it from a standing position onto a concrete floor (a few times, because it gave us such a thrill), and spilled a full 16-ounce cup of liquid across its keyboard. The D14RM withstood all that abuse without any apparent damage to its structure or functionality. And mind you, the D14RM uses a mechanical hard drive. Yes, an SSD seems like a more obvious choice for a notebook that’s meant to be tossed about, but then it wouldn’t be nearly so affordable.

The D14RM is a business-class notebook, with components that are suitable to that role—a 3.06GHz Core 2 Duo, 4GB of DDR2/800, a 320GB 5,400rpm hard drive, integrated graphics, and Windows Vista Business 64-bit (Windows 7 Home Premium, Pro, and Ultimate are also options). But in our initial benchmark runs, we were surprised to see scores that trailed our 2.53GHz zero-point machine by more than 30 percent in some cases. Further investigation revealed a serious power-management flaw. Even with the power plan set to High Performance, the D14RM’s two cores dropped to half-speed when the notebook was plugged into an outlet; when the notebook was unplugged and running on battery, the CPU performed at full speed. Weird, huh?

It seemed like a BIOS issue to us, and, indeed, GammaTech delivered us a BIOS fix within a few days of our discovery, which resolved the matter. But it does make us question how the company could miss a flaw this massive.

With the updated BIOS, the D14RM performed as expected. It bested our zero-point business notebook by very healthy margins in almost every benchmark. The only exception was in Photoshop, where our zero-point held a minor 2.3 percent lead, likely the result of that notebook’s SSD. We also compared the D14RM’s scores to the iBuypower M865TU that we reviewed in November, since both notebooks use the exact same 3.06GHz T9900 processor. Each notebook won two of our four content creation benchmarks, neither by more than seven percent, so we’ll call it a draw.

In terms of amenities, the D14RM offers a good selection of ports, including HDMI—all of which are protected with attached rubber caps to prevent dirt and dust from mucking with the works. But it’s strange that GammaTech makes these allowances for outdoor use yet outfits the D14RM with a glossy 1280x800 screen. Such a highly reflective surface is totally unsuitable for use in bright natural light. Back in the plus column, our model came equipped with the Bluetooth, built-in 3G GSM modem, and webcam options, to make the sturdy D14RM an accommodating overall package—and for about half the price of a comparably sized Panasonic Toughbook.

Asus G51Vx-RX05

Katherine Stevenson — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 16:00:00 -0600

This budget notebook will make gamers smile

If there’s one thing that might take your mind off your financial woes, it’s some good old-fashioned fragging. And Asus is happy to oblige by offering the most affordable full-fledged gaming notebook that we’ve ever tested. The G51Vx-RX05, sold exclusively through Best Buy, costs less than a grand—OK, at $999, that’s a technicality, but still, this 15-inch notebook is cheap. It’s half the cost of the 15-inch iBuypower M865TU gaming rig we reviewed in November.

Of course, Asus had to cut some corners to get there. The notebook’s Core 2 Duo P7350 CPU, for example, boasts a mere 2GHz clock speed—that’s 33 percent slower than the iBuypower’s proc. And true to form, the G51Vx-RX05 performed about 30 percent slower than the iBuypower (our new zero-point rig) in our Premiere, Photoshop, ProShow, and MainConcept benchmarks.

A Power Control Panel option in the G51Vx-RX05 lets you overclock the CPU by up to 150MHz. That’s a 7.5 percent boost, which amounted to around five percent of additional performance in our CPU-centric benchmarks: Using the so-called “Extreme turbo” mode, we shaved 11 seconds off our original Photoshop time and a minute off of Premiere Pro. That doesn’t do much to bridge the gap between the G51Vx-RX05 and its higher-clocked competition, but it does add some value to the package.

If you're not crazy about the G51Vx-RX05's blue-backlit keyboard, a function button lets you dim or disable the lights.

Where you’ll find the most value, however, is in the notebook’s GPU. The G51Vx-RX05 sports the same GTX 260M graphics part as iBuypower’s machine. As we noted in our review of the iBuypower rig, this GPU performs head and shoulders above any previous-generation mobile part, serving up playable frame rates in today’s more graphically demanding games. Although iBuypower’s much-faster CPU gives that machine a slight edge in games (and effectively knocks Asus’s rig off our benchmark chart), the G51Vx-RX05’s game performance is still laudable. Compared to Toshiba’s 9800M-equipped Qosmio X305 (reviewed in June 2009), the G51Vx-RX05 was more than 20 percent faster in Far Cry 2 and Call of Duty 4. In Crysis even, Asus’s rig hit 30.48fps with the settings at High—that’s 30 percent faster than the Qosmio performed.

Physically, the G51Vx-RX05 seems solid. Its glossy white cover, glossy black trim, and blue-backlit keyboard give it an unmistakable gaming aesthetic that’s not too outlandish. Its rubberized palm rest adds a nice, comfy touch. And while its 15.6-inch reflective screen sports a relatively low 1366x768 native res, that can actually be a boon in games.

Does the G51Vx-RX05 make compromises? Yes. But in doing so, it delivers on its mission to provide top-notch gaming at an unbeatable price. And for that, this notebook deserves high marks.

Toshiba NB205

Nathan Edwards — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 12:00:18 -0600

Getting it right the first time

Toshiba waited a long time to enter the netbook market, but as the NB205 proves, taking some time to learn from your competitors can be a good thing. The NB205 offers everything we expect from a netbook, as well as some unexpected bonus features, and does so for less than $400. We liked the NB205 when we used it in our netbook upgrading feature (October); here we give it a full review.

The NB205 has a matte-silver plastic chassis and a textured matte lid, available in blue, pink, black, white, or brown. We appreciate that Toshiba has bucked the glossy fingerprint-magnet trend here. The netbook is solidly constructed, with a color-matched glossy bezel and hinge. The included six-cell battery protrudes about a half an inch beyond the back of the netbook, and is slightly wobbly to the touch, but given the 6:45 (hr:min) battery life, a little wobble doesn’t bother us.

As we discovered in our netbook upgrading feature, both RAM and hard drive are easily accessible, although the hard drive panel uses TORX-6 fasteners rather than the more common Phillips head screws found on the RAM compartment. Still, if you’re ponying up for an SSD or larger hard drive for your netbook, you can probably spare a few bucks for a TORX-6 driver, too.

The NB205 looks good and runs well. But why is the tilde key down between the Alt key and the space bar?

The NB205 sports the standard array of ports: three USB 2.0, VGA, audio jacks, 10/100 Ethernet, and an SD card reader. Remember the bonus features we talked about? One of the USB ports is a Sleep-and-Charge port, so you can charge your phone or other USB-powered gadget even when the computer is off. It’s an addition so obvious we wish more netbook makers included it. We also appreciate the hard drive movement sensor.

The chiclet keyboard is easy to type on—the keys are more widely spaced than most, so you’re less likely to hit the wrong key. It’s not perfect, though—some keys are in strange places (for example, the tilde key is between Alt and the space bar), and pushing too hard on a center key causes the whole keyboard to flex slightly. The touchpad is textured, and as wide as the space bar, while the buttons are responsive and clicky, albeit identical in texture to the chassis.

Because the NB205 has the same guts as every other non-Ion Atom N280 netbook out there, we expected it to perform at least as well as our favorite 10-incher, the Asus Eee 1000HE, and slightly faster than our N270-bound zero-point system, the 12-inch Lenovo S12 (reviewed last month). And it did perform between three and five percent better than the zero point in our Photoshop, MainConcept, and Quake III tests. It’s a nice (if small) boost; the equivalent of winning a 100-meter dash by a hundredth of a second—the netbook world has yet to find its Usain Bolt.

With a lap weight of two pounds, 15 ounces, the NB205 is firmly in the middle of the netbook weight class. Its price, battery life, aesthetics, and performance put it near the top of the current generation, and we appreciate perks like Sleep-and-Charge. It’s one of the best netbooks on the market today. But TORX screws on the hard drive compartment? Toshiba, you were so close.

iBuypower M865TU

Katherine Stevenson — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 11:15:39 -0600

A 15-inch gaming notebook that holds its own in bigger company

From the looks of it, you probably wouldn’t figure iBuypower’s M865TU for a gaming notebook. Its aesthetic is much more subdued than typical representatives of that class. The chassis is covered in a subtly textured black plastic, with tasteful silver trim around the edges and the touch pad. Unlike other gaming notebooks, backlighting is limited to the power button and an unobtrusive iBuypower logo on the notebook’s lid. Furthermore, the 15-inch M865TU is smaller than many gaming rigs and has a more streamlined formfactor.

But despite its smaller stature and no-nonsense appearance, the M865TU’s got game. That’s courtesy of the Nvidia GTX 260M GPU under its hood. Based on a reworked G92 chip, which uses a smaller, faster process (55nm vs. 65nm) and features slightly higher clocks, the GTX 260M proves more capable than previous-generation G92 mobile parts. For example, the M865TU performed almost 30 percent better in Far Cry 2 and Call of Duty 4 than the 9800M GTX-equipped Qosmio X305 we reviewed in June, with scores of 31.3fps and 58.3fps, respectively, at the notebook’s 1680x1050 native res and the highest quality settings. (This month, we jettisoned the games we have previously used for notebooks reviews in favor of FC2 and CoD4, which are far more indicative of a GPU’s prowess—expect to see these titles integrated into our benchmark chart going forward.)

If not for the tell-tale glossy screen, you might mistake the staid M865TU for a business notebook.

In the applications department, the M865TU is also competent. The rig’s 3.06GHz Core 2 Duo Mobile helped it handily whoop our zero-point notebook in the benchmarks by 30-60 percent. Granted, the story changes when you compare the M865TU to quad-core machines. The Core 2 Quad Mobile part in the Qosmio X305, while clocked at just 2GHz, beat the M865TU by 13-18 percent in the benchmarks that scale with cores (Premiere, Photoshop, MainConcept), although lost to the M865TU in Photoshop by four percent. Naturally, the Core i7 AVADirect D900F (reviewed in September) was even more punishing, winning the multicore-optimized apps by upwards of 60 percent and even Photoshop by 38 percent. Of course, the D900F is a mammoth desktop-replacement rig that costs twice as much as the M865TU—it should dominate.

What we like about the M865TU is that it provides decent application performance, a marked improvement in single-card notebook gaming, and a more portable size and weight—it’s lighter by two or more pounds than other gaming notebooks we’ve tested recently. Sadly, its battery life isn’t much better than the pack’s, lasting just one hour and 40 minutes when playing a movie in power-saving mode. Oh, and the speakers suck.

Lenovo IdeaPad S12

Nathan Edwards — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 21:30:00 -0500

How big can a netbook get before it stops being a netbook?

The guts of the Lenovo IdeaPad S12 are virtually identical to the IdeaPad S10 that we reviewed back in 2008—1.6GHz Intel Atom N270 CPU, 1GB DDR2 RAM, 160GB HDD, and integrated Intel GMA950 graphics. The difference is the body. At 11.4 inches wide, this is one of the largest “netbooks” we’ve ever tested. The S12 has a 12.1-inch WXGA screen with a 1280x800 native resolution—far superior to the netbook-standard 1024x600, and much more usable. The glossy screen is impressively bright even at low LED-backlight levels.

The S12’s keyboard features large, comfortable keys and is a joy to type on, although as usual, Lenovo has mixed up where the Ctrl and Fn keys should be. The glossy black patterned lid and matte-black ABS frame make the S12 one of the best-looking and best-constructed netbooks we’ve ever tested, although the battery is a little wobbly and the lid is a fingerprint magnet. Both RAM and hard drive are easily accessible and upgradeable.

You'd be amazed how much difference a screen with decent resolution makes.

While some S12s ship with VIA’s Nano platform and an Ion-based version is in the works, ours came with a standard N270, and its performance reflected that. The S12 took 708 seconds to complete our Photoshop benchmark—about the same as the Lenovo S10 and Samsung NC10, two other N270-based netbooks. In Quake III, the S12 grabbed a respectable 60.9fps, slower than the 63.8fps the record-holding MSI Wind U123 managed with the same settings. The six-cell battery lasted a respectable four hours, 15 minutes in our rundown test.

The Lenovo IdeaPad S12 is not the fastest netbook we’ve ever tested, nor the smallest—but that isn’t the point. It’s a competent netbook in a much more usable formfactor. The higher screen resolution makes everything better—from browsing the web to editing photos and watching movies. And at a three pound, 6.5 ounce lap weight, it’s only a few ounces heavier than the Asus Eee 1000HE or MSI Wind U123—still light enough to throw in a bag and bring to the coffee shop.

Some might argue that a netbook with a 12-inch screen isn’t even a netbook anymore. We think they’re wrong. It’s still cheap (on the low end of $500) and portable, has great battery life, and the combination of a great screen and excellent keyboard means that folks who dismiss netbooks as too small to be usable have another thing coming.

Toshiba Portégé A605

Katherine Stevenson — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 13:00:00 -0500

A top-of-the-line ultraportable in lower-rent wrapping

In our August 2009 ultraportable notebook roundup we fell hard for Toshiba’s Portégé R600—the lightest, sleekest ultraportable notebook we’d ever tested. At $2,150, however, that notebook isn’t cheap.

This month we tested Toshiba’s more affordable ultraportable, the Portégé A605, to see how this consumer-class model compares with its fancier business-class kin.

In looks, the two machines are quite different. While the R600 wowed us with its silver, svelte stylishness, the A605 looks more commonplace. Inside and out, it’s adorned with that shiny black plastic you see everywhere these days, which looks really good… until you smudge it. Its keyboard, thankfully, has the same fingerprint-proof silver coating as the R600’s, and more importantly, sports the same full-size dimensions that make typing on it easy. The A605, which measures 11.3x8.8x1.2 inches, is close in size to the R600, just not as wafer-thin, and it’s a noticeable three-quarters of a pound heavier. Like the R600, the A605 offers a generous selection of ports and expandability options, including a USB/eSATA port (in addition to two standard USB ports), an ExpressCard slot, and an SD media reader.

One of the few features the A605 doesn't share with the elite Portégé R600 is a transflective screen. This one is still serviceable outdoors, however.

Inside, the R600 and A605 sport the same ultra-low-voltage 1.4GHz Intel Mobile Core 2 Duo proc, the same 3GB of DDR2/667 RAM, the same Intel GS45 chipset, and nearly the same DVD burner (the R600’s has a slimmer profile). Besides all that, the A605’s 320GB hard drive is double the capacity of the R600’s.

Not surprisingly, the two machines perform similarly, although the R600 did ever-so-slightly edge out the A605 in our benchmarks. Photoshop and ProShow are mostly CPU-bound, so it’s hard to explain the small gap in those scores. Perhaps the A605’s larger hard drive plays a part, or maybe extra baggage in Vista Home Premium (vs. Vista Business) is at fault. Other variables could explain why the A605’s battery pooped out just shy of four hours in our video rundown test while the R600’s lasted almost a half-hour longer.

Neither the R600 nor the A605 are the best-performing ultraportables we’ve tested. That honor goes to HP’s 2530p and Lenovo’s X200s (both also reviewed in August), which featured 1.86GHz Core 2 Duo procs. The R600 overcame this deficit with its near-weightlessness. The less-expensive A605 doesn’t have this special quality. It does, however, have respectable performance, a strong feature set, and a damn good price.

MSI Wind U123

Nathan Edwards — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 13:30:42 -0500

Large and in charge

MSI’s latest venture into the netbook market offers slightly faster performance than the rest of the netbooks we’ve tested with much longer battery life to boot, but the nine-cell battery that makes that possible sends the MSI Wind U123 into the heavyweight range. It makes us wonder: How heavy can a netbook become before it stops really being a netbook? Do we buy them for their formfactor or their performance? Or is it just the price?

The battery is the first thing we noticed about our Wind review unit. The dang thing juts from the back of the netbook, raising the back end more than an inch from horizontal and adding more than a pound to the total weight—making the lap weight three pounds, four ounces. But it’s worth it if battery performance is king. In our full-screen DVD-video battery rundown test, the U123 far outlasted the competition, achieving just over seven hours of playback. The previous netbook record was shared by two Eee PCs, the 901 and 1000HE, both of which clocked in at five and a half hours. This means a nine-cell-powered Wind U123 will likely get eight to nine hours of light usage on a single charge.

Battery life wasn’t the only area in which the Wind U123 outperformed the competition, though. In both Photoshop and our newly instituted Quake III benchmark, it squeaked out small but perceptible leads on the competition—beating our previous Photoshop winner, the Asus Eee 1000HE, by five percent, and running Quake III 5fps faster than the Samsung NC10.

If you don't mind a bit of junk in the trunk, the Wind U123's nine-cell battery will fast win you over.

The Wind U123’s internals are exactly what we’d expect from this newer generation of netbooks: 1.66GHz Intel Atom N280 CPU, 1GB DDR2/667 RAM, 160GB 5,400rpm hard drive, Bluetooth 2.0, and 802.11b/g wireless card. Its external features are similarly standard: three USB 2.0 ports, a multicard slot, VGA, audio in/out, and 10/100 Ethernet. The LED backlight on the Wind U123’s screen is one of the brightest we’ve seen on a netbook; at 60 percent it was brighter than the 1000HE at 100 percent.

MSI has outfitted the U123’s lid with a color scheme it calls Midnight Blue—we call it Sparkly Blue Fingerprint Magnet. The rest of the netbook is matte black and much more smudge-resistant, except for the LCD bezel and the area above the function keys, which are glossy black, and the touchpad buttons, which have a brushed-metal look. The touchpad itself is responsive, if a bit small; you have to download drivers if you want to enable touchpad scrolling. The keyboard is a standard scissor-switch mechanism keyboard, as opposed to the chiclet keys we’re used to seeing on netbooks these days, but it’s quite comfortable to type on, and is nearly full-size. Indeed, our only gripe is the same one we have with every MSI keyboard: the damn Function key is where the Ctrl key should be, and vice versa. This has screwed us up more times than the 1040-EZ.

The Wind U123 boasts user-upgradeable memory and hard drive, though it involves removing 10 screws and punching through a warranty sticker, then removing the entire bottom of the chassis. At least you don’t have to take the whole computer apart, as with the original Acer Aspire One, but it’s not exactly as simple as removing two screws and popping off a panel, à la the Asus Eee 1000HE.

The Wind U123 brings a lot of muscle to the netbook arena: It’s slightly faster and has a much longer battery life than any we’ve previously tested, though the nine-cell battery adds bulk to the otherwise sleek netbook. And the bright screen is sure to win fans. But there are certainly netbooks out there that are lighter, easier to upgrade, and offer similar performance, even if they can’t quite match the battery life.

AVADirect D900F

Katherine Stevenson — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 17:30:00 -0500

The highest-performing CPU isn't just for desktop rigs

When AVADirect offered to send us a Core i7 notebook, we said, hell yeah, and immediately cleared off space in the Lab—a lot of space, because the D900F not only sports a powerful desktop CPU but also the powerfully large proportions you’d expect from a desktop replacement. At 15.5x11.75x2.5 inches with a carry weight of nearly 15 pounds, the D900F is portable in only the loosest sense of the word. You certainly wouldn’t want to lug this thing around on a regular basis.

What it offers instead is the best damn applications performance we’ve ever seen from a notebook. That’s primarily due to the machine’s 3.33GHz Core i7-975 Extreme Edition proc, but the two 80GB Intel X25-M SSDs in RAID 0 no doubt also help. The closest-performing notebook we’ve tested—Lenovo’s W700 ThinkPad, with its 2.53GHz Core 2 Extreme Q9300—was more than 50 percent slower than the D900F in our Premiere Pro CS3 and Photoshop CS3 benchmarks, and more than 80 percent slower in ProShow Producer and MainConcept. Indeed, in all those tests, the D900F was within 10 percent of the 3.6GHz Velocity Micro desktop system that held our desktop benchmark records for months until Maingear’s 4GHz ePhex unseated it in August.

The D900F's Clevo body has no trouble accommodating the highest-performing Core i7--it ran Prime 95 for 24 hours without incident.

While the D900F isn’t intended to be a gaming notebook, per se, we’d expect a desktop replacement, particularly one at this price, to serve all of our needs, not just work chores. In our standard gaming benchmarks, the D900F blew away the competition—including notebooks with CrossFire graphics—in Quake 4, but performed only average in FEAR. We don’t hold its FEAR score against it as FEAR has grown increasingly unreliable and we’re retiring it this month. To gather more usable information, we also tested the D900F with Far Cry 2 and Call of Duty 4, where we achieved respectable frame rates of 34.5 and 68.9, respectively, with the resolution set to 1680x1050 (down from the native 1920x1200) and visual quality at the highest settings. The D900F likely wouldn’t satisfy the needs of a hardcore gamer, but then again, we don’t know of any mobile graphics solution that would.

Aiding its mission as a desktop replacement, the D900F is generously appointed for entertainment purposes. It’s equipped with a Blu-ray reader, the notebook’s four speakers put out good sound, the screen’s glossy surface adds vibrancy to movies and games, and the port selection includes HDMI, a front-mounted headphone jack, and a 7.1 channel S/PDIF output. There’s even a cable port (although our model was not equipped with a TV tuner card).

Those features along with useful others such as an ExpressCard slot, a media reader, a webcam, four USB ports, and eSATA make the D900F a well-rounded machine. Again, this isn’t the machine for a road warrior—besides being cumbersome, the D900F’s 12-cell battery couldn’t run a movie for much more than an hour on a full charge. But if space issues have you considering an alternative to a full desktop setup, or if you need a machine you can occasionally take with you, the D900F is a solid choice.