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.

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Fujitsu has been a pioneer in the notebook category, dating back to its P2000, one of the first ultraportables to feature an optical drive. In this roundup, however, the standard Fujitsu set is better implemented by its competitors.

At 10.75x8.25x1.5 inches, the P8020 has a slightly smaller footprint than the others, but, sadly, where that’s most apparent is in the keyboard. It’s surprising how less than a half-inch can change your typing experience, but we found the slightly smaller keys and key pad difficult to use. The P8020’s touchpad has the distinction of being multi-touch, meaning you can zoom in and out by pinching or separating your fingers, a moderately useful tool. We’d rather have multi-touch right-click, frankly.

At two pounds, 13.8 ounces, the P8020 is light but feels well-constructed, although there’s some flex to the body and display cover. The entire unit is matte black, save the glossy black lid. Fingerprints on this surface are of course inevitable, but the lid also picked up a scratch after minimal use.

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The first word that comes to mind when you pick up HP’s 2530p is “solid.” From its heft, to its construction, to its scratch-resistant anodized aluminum display enclosure and palm rest, this notebook seems eminently rugged. HP claims that the 2530p has passed a battery of Mil-Spec tests including 26 drops from different angles at a distance of 30 inches, but we didn’t have the stomach to verify that. We will say the notebook seems up to the rigors of heavy use and regular transport. The price of this sturdiness is added weight—at three pounds, 12.7 ounces, the 2530p weighs about a pound more than the other notebooks in this roundup, although it doesn’t feel cumbersome. We’re more bothered that the battery protrudes from the notebook’s 11.1x8.5x1.5-inch body by almost an inch.

The 2530p’s keyboard feels as solid as the body, with a conventional key layout, full-size keys, and both TrackPoint and touchpad options. Small nubbins just above the palm rest ostensibly prevent the keys from abrading the screen when the notebook is shut. Like the X200s, the 2530p sports a keyboard light. An LED-lit touch-sensitive volume slider above the keypad would be handy if it weren’t so twitchy. Teleconferencers will like that the 2530p features a 2MP webcam (vs. the typical 1.3MP) and a dual-array mic. Most everyone will like the notebook’s full complement of ports and slots—our only complaint is that there are just two USB ports.

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For several months we’ve been talking about what a great value Gateway’s P-7811 FX gaming notebook was (reviewed October 2008). So we were anxious to see how the update to that model, the P-7808u FX, holds up.

At first glance, “update” seems too strong a word for Gateway’s latest 17-inch performance-oriented notebook. The P-7808u FX looks identical to its predecessor, sporting the exact same black-and-orange chassis as the P-7811 FX, the exact same arrangement of ports— three USB, FireWire, eSATA, HDMI, VGA—and the exact same right-angle power connector that we griped about the first go-round.

The P-7808u FX even features the same videocard, a GeForce 9800M GTS. This card helped last year’s P-7811 FX win us over with impressive scores in our standard gaming benchmarks and the new P-7808u FX’s performance in those tests was equally strong. But compared with a dual-GPU notebook such as CyberPower’s Extreme M1 (May 2009), Gateway’s graphics solution shows its age. When faced with a more graphically intensive title like UT3, the P-7808u FX mustered a score of 64fps compared with the Extreme M1’s 114fps—and it would no doubt fare worse in more modern titles.

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