Maximum PC laptops RSS Feed

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.

Maximum PC Primer: Lightweight Netbook Computing with Linux

Will Kraft — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 23:00:00 -0500

These days, netbooks have become a very popular alternative to conventional notebooks for mobile computing. Netbooks are lightweight, have great battery life, and are relatively inexpensive compared to full-sized notebooks. This makes them ideal for students or people on a budget. Of course, the lower cost and extended battery life does not come without a trade-off—many netbooks have lower system specs as well, which means that they are not designed for heavy-computing applications.

Although many netbooks now run Windows XP because of Microsoft's hurried entry into that market, many earlier models were built to run Linux. (For instance, the Asus Eee 700 Series ran Xandros, and the current models are offered with either Linux or Windows) And although most current netbooks are x86-based (running the Intel Atom CPU), the usage of ARM-based CPU chips is likely to increase in the future since ARM offers far superior energy efficiency over x86 and battery life has always been a major factor in mobile computing. ARM chips have been used successfully for some time in smartphones and music players, including the newest Zune HD. Since ARM is a different CPU architecture than x86, Windows will not work on ARM. Earlier this year, Microsoft's Steve Guggenheim said that the company currently has no plans to port Windows 7 to the ARM architecture. Therefore, any new wave of ARM-based netbooks will run Linux once again. Unlike Windows, most Linux distros can be compiled for ARM if you have the requisite skills for doing so.

Linux is an ideal choice for netbooks for multiple reasons in addition to CPU architecture. Netbooks generally have lower specs than most full-size notebooks (not to mention desktops) so they are ideal for lightweight applications like web browsing, document preparation, etc. Linux does these tasks very well without the bloat that Windows systems have to deal with from anti-malware utilities. This primer will help you set up and optimize Linux for your netbook.

The Operating System

While any Linux distro will work for your netbook with some degree of success, it is better to use one that is explicitly designed for that purpose. Many specialized distros (optimized for a specific hardware configuration) have sprung up for models like the Acer Aspire One, The Asus Eee, and several others while more generalized distros exist for all netbooks. Most netbook distros are based on Ubuntu, since Ubuntu is very well developed and has enjoyed unparalleled success on more conventional systems.

The first distro we should address is Ubuntu Netbook Remix, which is a trimmed-down variant of Ubuntu designed for netbooks. It is compatible with most netbooks makes and models on both x86 and ARM architecture. (mainline Ubuntu support for ARM is coming soon)

Easy Peasy is another Ubuntu-derived distro that ships with a few proprietary applications. (Skype instead of Ekiga)

Crunchbang is a scaled-down variant of Ubuntu that is especially good since it packs in plenty of software and has a very small memory footprint compared to standard Ubuntu. Crunchbang uses the OpenBox window manager; like on Fluxbox, most activity is done through right-clicking.

Eeebuntu is an Ubuntu derivative that has been designed specifically for the Asus EEE. Unlike Ubuntu Netbook Remix, Easy Peasy, CrunchBang, and Eeebuntu only support x86 at this time.

Standard Xubuntu is also a good choice for low-spec systems, including netbooks.

If you prefer a lightweight distro that is not based on Ubuntu, Slax is also an excellent choice to use on a netbook due to its small footprint; memory usage is seldom over 256 MB at any given time, so you will experience minimal swapping. (in fact, you can run Slax entirely in RAM—just watch your memory usage while doing so!) Based on conventional Slackware, Slax offers a nice slimmed-down KDE 3.5 and a nice modular package management design if you need to add more stuff.

Instead of the heavy OpenOffice.org office suite, Slax includes parts of the Koffice suite: Kword (not to be confused with kwrite, a lightweight text editor) Kspread, and Kpresent. These are excellent lightweight alternatives to OpenOffice.org, but are not practical for most lightweight netbook distros since you have to install most of KDE to make them work. However, they work quite well in this situation since KDE is already included in the distro.

Media is also handled quite well with Juk and Kplayer handling audio and video, respectively. However, you may want to add a more powerful player like VLC that can do both. This is not as painful as it sounds, since you can easily custom-build your own Slax remix by using a rather unique tool before you even download it. If you choose to build your own Slax, just keep your netbook's limitations in mind and don't get too carried away with adding packages since having more applications create a heavier system.

Although Slax is designed as a pure LiveCD distro like Knoppix, it is possible to install it. The process involves copying the Slax files to your netbook's hard drive and running the bootinst.sh script in Slax's /boot folder. If you run into snags while installing Slax, there are online guides that can help you get things sorted out. Once you install Slax, you may have to do some tinkering (installing firmware or ndiswrapper) to make certain wireless devices and webcams work properly. Also, you may need to make sure that your bootloader is configured correctly.

If you really want to go lightweight, you should check out Damn Small Linux. This miniature 50MB operating system packs in a full Linux experience in a footprint that is about as tiny as a full-featured Linux distro can get these days. DSL is a Live CD distro but can also be installed in accordance with the same precautions as Slax. In both cases, preparing Slax and DSL for netbook use is best left to more experienced users rather than beginners.

Conventional full-size distros like Debian and Mandriva have been known to work well on Netbooks as well. If you go that route, try to keep a small installation and memory footprint to minimize the burden on your system.

Regardless of the operating system you use, a major priority should be to reduce disk activity, especially swapping. (swap is the Linux equivalent to the Windows paging file) On solid state disks, swapping is actually detrimental; SSDs have a finite number of “writes” before they begin to lose data integrity and swapping is a very write-intensive process. The number of write cycles may range anywhere between 100,000 to five million writes. This may sound like a lot, (especially on USB flash drives that don't get written to very often) but it really isn't if you use your netbook on a regular basis. Therefore, it is imperative that you minimize swapping as much as possible to avoid artificially shortening the life of your SSD. If you disable swapping altogether, your system will spontaneously crash if you run out of memory, so it is best to set aside only a small permanent buffer of swap space to keep this from happening. (additional swap can be added at a moment’s notice through swap files) With that said, you can also use Linux successfully without any type of swap at all if you keep a vigilant eye on your RAM usage at all times.

This situation does not apply to the few netbooks that use conventional hard drives; since there is no finite number of writes with that technology, you are able to swap normally to your heart's content. However, excessive disk activity can drain the battery rather quickly whereas RAM usage does not, so it still pays to run as much of the system in memory as possible.

Preparing the Operating System

Since many netbooks lack optical drives, the usual method of downloading an ISO of your favorite distro and burning it to a CD/DVD to create the installation medium will not work. Instead, the best choice is to use a USB flash drive as your installation media. Since the ISO can't be “burned” to a USB stick the same way it can be burned to a disk, you will need to convert it.

UNetbootin is a nice utility for Windows and Linux that can take a conventional ISO image and install it to a USB flash drive. Alternatively, it can download and prepare a distro for you automatically. Once this has been done, you will be able to boot from the flash drive and install the operating system as you normally would. Using a flash drive has the added bonus of being more efficient; since you can overwrite the contents of the flash drive as needed, you won't eventually end up with a big pile of obsolete installation discs.

Lightweight Starter Software

Since the best course of action is to stay within the confines of your netbook's physical memory regardless of the type of disk you are using, it is best to use lightweight applications that have a smaller disk and memory footprint. Regardless of the hard drive type used, most netbooks have a fairly low amount of disk space compared to full-size notebooks or desktops. For instance, most models have an 8GB or 16GB SSD or a 160GB hard drive, which isn't very big compared to the 500 GB and 1TB (or larger) drives found on today's desktops and some high-end notebooks. Likewise, many netbooks have only 512 MB to 1GB memory. Therefore, it is best to regard your netbook as simply being a low-power system, much like an older computer. Because of this, it is often essential to use lightweight software that works well on such systems.

Choosing the right desktop environment can be a huge factor in the performance of your netbook. Conventional desktops like GNOME or KDE may overtax the system (unless they have been modified to be more lightweight than the standard build) and leave little free memory left for other applications. Most of the Ubuntu-based netbook operating systems like Easy Peasy, Ubuntu Netbook Remix, and Eeebuntu have a simplified launcher system that is easier to read and navigate on small compact screens. This special launcher has large icons and a tabbed interface system that turns the entire desktop into a program selection menu. The rationale behind this design is that display space is a premium on small netbook displays and it is pointless to waste most of the desktop space on a wallpaper image while forcing the user to navigate small menus.

If you prefer a more conventional interface, lightweight desktop environments like XFCE (used by Xubuntu) and LXDE (used by Knoppix 6 and one variant of EeeBuntu) are ideal for netbook systems and low-spec systems in general. Fluxbox and similar window managers also fit the netbook niche very well.

Smaller, lighter applications can often get the job done just as well as heavier ones. Since netbooks are frequently used as a companion to more powerful computers, you should load them with only as much software as you really need on a regular basis. For instance, many people only need a word processor and perhaps a spreadsheet for day-to-day use. Therefore, it makes sense to install only a word processor and spreadsheet as standalone programs if you only need those things instead of carrying around a full office suite that has things you may not need regularly (like presentation, drawing, and database software).

Abiword is an ideal lightweight word processor that supports OpenDocument Text, Word 2007, “classic” Microsoft Word DOC format, and much more. Its interface greatly resembles that of OpenOffice Writer or pre-2007 MS Word, so users familiar with those programs should not have a difficult time using Abiword. Abiword has passive (red underline) and active spellcheck. In addition to that, Abiword has a passive grammar check option, (suspected grammar errors are underlined in green) a feature that Writer lacks altogether. GNUmeric is a standalone spreadsheet that has some resemblance to Excel. It can import/write many different spreadsheet formats and even has support for graphs.

For more information on running Linux and lightweight computing, refer to our previous guides on the topic.

Hands-On with HP's Envy 13 and 15 Notebooks

Norman Chan — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 15:00:00 -0500

If the Voodoo Envy was HP's answer to Apple's Macbook Air, than the just-announced Envy 13 and 15 laptops are diect responses to Apple's Macbook Pro lineup. Sacrificing edgy styling and ridiculously-thin dimensions (seriously, who cares anymore?), the new Envys are built more for performance to meet the demands of the high-end market. These are definitely not underpowered thin-and-lights -- the 13.1-inch model packs a 1.86GHz Core 2 Duo, 3GB of DDR3 memory, and an ATI Radeon HD 4330 discrete graphics card. The 15.6-inch model is even more powerful. And both support an innovative battery slice add-on for prolonged use.

Envy 13

Full specs:

12.59" x 8.46" x 0.8"
13.1" LED Widescreen Display (1366x768)
1.86GHz Intel Core 2 Duo Processor SL9400
1066MHz FSP, 6MB L2 Cache
3GB DDR3 System Memory
ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4330 Graphics
250GB 5400 RPM SATA Hard Drive
Brushed Aluminum with Metal Etching and HP Webcam
Intel WiFi Link 5100 AGN
2-in-1 integrated Digital Media Reader
Beats Audio
2 USB ports, HDMI, RJ-45
Weight: 3.74 pounds

One thing we noticed was the exceptionally bright screen of the Envy 13. The WXGA LED-backlit display has an 82% color gamut and 410 nit brightness. When paired next to a Macbook Air with the same image on both, the HP's rendering looked more vibrant and full.

Battery Slice

The base of the Envy houses a 4-cell lithium-ion polymer battery, which is good for 7 hours of battery life. But included in the box is a thin battery slice, which extends the battery life to 18 hours (HP's estimates). The battery slice is surprisingly thin, adding less than half an inch of additional thickness when magnetically latched to the bottom of the laptop. Its beveled edges make it non-intrusive, and it has a small button on its base to indicate remaining juice.

The base of the Envy 13 -- note the small magnetic connector for the battery slice.

Size Comparisons

Envy 15

The 15.6-inch model is more than just a supersized version of the Envy 13. It has a different laser-etched design all around the magnesium alloy unibody, housing an Intel quad-core (which looks to be the not-yet officially announced Core i7 part). Other specs include an ATI 4830 graphics chip with 1GB of video memory, up to 16GB of system RAM, and two hard drive bays (no internal optical drive). The Envy 15 has its own battery slice, as well, which adds to it's relatively slim 1-inch thickness and 5.18 pound heft.

One thing we noticed was that the resolution of the Envy 15's screen is the same as that on the Envy 13 -- 1366x768. Hopefully, HP will offer a higher-resolution option.

The system properties window indicates that the Envy 15 is using an Intel Core processor, model Q820.

This label confirms that the CPU is indeed a 1.73GHz Clarksfield part, which Intel is rumored to officially announce at IDF.

Ultraportable Notebook Roundup -- Four Featherweights Reviewed

Katherine Stevenson — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 13:00:00 -0500

But how do today's feather-light notebooks measure up in features and performance?

With all the fuss being made about netbooks, you’d think they were God’s gift to computing convenience. Sure, there’s something to be said for those low-cost, low-power machines, but what if you actually need to get some real work done? There’s nothing convenient about being hobbled by an anemic processor, a relatively low-res screen, a shrunken keyboard, and the various other compromises that contribute to a netbook’s cost savings.

For extreme portability in a machine that packs a punch, you’ll need to set your sights higher, to an ultraportable notebook. Ultraportable notebooks are every bit as light, or lighter than, a netbook, with the added benefit of superior features and a more powerful processor. As a general rule, you’ll find your hardiest ultraportables among the business-class models, which are made for both regular travel and all-around productivity. Of course, convenience of this caliber comes at a premium price—usually four to five times the cost of the average netbook.

Thus, choosing an ultraportable is not a decision to be taken lightly. To help you out, we gathered up four elite representatives of the class and put them through rigorous testing. Obviously, we can’t expect any ultraportable machine to have the muscle required for chores like video editing, batch transcoding, or serious gaming. But we do expect these notebooks to accomplish the gamut of typical day-to-day tasks, including photo editing, slide-show creation, and multitasking. And we expect them to offer all the comfort and features necessary for full-fledged computing on the go.

So let’s see how these featherweights fare.

The Reviews

Lenovo ThinkPad X200s

HP 2530p

Toshiba Portege R600

Fujitsu P8020

Ultraportable vs. Netbook

Despite the merits of an ultraportable notebook as a serious productivity tool, there will no doubt be folks still intent on getting a netbook for their all-purpose computing needs—the prospect of a four-fold cost savings can lead to all manner of crazy thinking.

To make the comparison a little more vivid, we looked at how our current favorite netbook—the $400 Asus Eee 1000HE (reviewed in June)—holds up to the ultraportables in this roundup. The benchmarks alone are pretty damning. While the best ultraportables took a little more than 30 minutes to create a slide show using ProShow, the 1000HE took nearly two and a half hours! Similarly, the 1000HE was two to three times slower than the ultraportables at running our Photoshop script. And while we’re impressed that the netbook could achieve 58fps in Quake 3, that’s not even close to the performance of its ultraportable brethren.

What this all means in real-world terms is that you’ll be doing a lot more waiting and a lot less working if you follow the dough. And that’s not even taking into account usability issues such as the keyboard, touch pad, and screen real-estate—which are all noticeably smaller on the 1000HE and sure to hold you back to some degree. Shoot, the 1000HE might offer superior battery life, but you’ll need every minute of that gain just to bridge the productivity gap, essentially cancelling out the benefit.

There are just no two ways around it: While a netbook might be fine for futzing around on the net and sending emails, it’s not the right tool for regular and varied computing.

1000HE Benchmarks

	Asus Eee PC 1000HE
ProShow (min:sec)	146:13
Photoshop CS (min:sec)	11:30
Quake 3 (fps)	58
Battery Life (hr:min)	5:35

Ultraportable Benchmarks

	Lenovo X200s	HP 2530p	Toshiba R600	Fujitsu P8020
ProShow (min:sec)	38:47	39:04	51:54	52:57
Photoshop CS (min:sec)	3:53	3:52	4:50	5:36
Quake 3 (fps)	155	156	107	95
Battery Life (hr:min)	4:00	4:10	4:17	4:26

Best scores are bolded.

HP TouchSmart tx2

Michael Brown — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 20:00:00 -0500

Don't touch me there

We’re unabashed fans of HP’s Touch-Smart desktop machines, so we were really looking forward to getting our digits on the new technology in a convertible touch-screen notebook PC. But our eager anticipation only made the reality of the TouchSmart tx2 all that more disappointing.

This is the first convertible touch-screen PC designed for the consumer market, and its underlying hardware—which in our review unit included AMD’s best mobile CPU—delivered enough horsepower for this machine’s touch-screen elements. Benchmark performance, on the other hand, was dismal (more on that later).

You can use the TouchSmart tx2 as a conventional notebook PC or rotate its 12.1-inch screen 180 degrees, lay it flat, and use the machine’s tablet functionality. The 1280x800 touch screen uses active digitizing technology and supports the use of either a fingertip or a digital pen (as opposed to the simple stylus that HP shipped with its first-generation TouchSmart desktops). The digital pen delivers hover feedback (it doesn’t have to touch the screen to activate user-interface elements, such as tooltips) and considerably more precision than a fingertip.

The pen is particularly useful for drawing diagrams and jotting notes, and HP’s handwriting-recognition software is nothing short of excellent. It had no problem recognizing even our sloppiest handwriting as fast as we could scribble. The vaunted multitouch feature—which lets you manipulate objects and certain aspects of the user interface—is really only useful with HP’s very basic MediaSmart applications.

That could change once Windows 7 hits the market, since the new OS is slated to offer native support for multitouch screens. (This machine came with the 64-bit version of Windows Vista Home Premium).

If you don’t have a work surface and don’t need to type, you can put the machine in tablet mode and cradle it in one arm. But we found that our elbow and shoulder could tolerate this position for only about 20 minutes because the TouchSmart tx2 is so heavy for its size: five pounds, one ounce (with the optional eight-cell battery). Adding the power supply brings the weight up to five pounds, 13 ounces. Replacing the optical drive with the plastic “weightsaver” shell sheds five ounces, but renders the machine much less useful.

As you can see in the chart below, the TouchSmart tx2 is abysmally slow with hardcore applications. And while the machine was nearly silent when idle or playing a movie, it sounded like a hair dryer when given a heavy load. The battery delivered two hours and 51 seconds—long enough to watch both Boogie Nights and its supplemental disc—using HP’s recommended settings (which balance battery life with performance).

We made many allowances for the performance of HP’s touch-screen desktops, with the caveat that they shouldn’t be a Maximum PC reader’s only computer. We can’t do the same for a notebook. And while we can ignore the TouchSmart tx2’s crappy gaming performance—no one buys an ultra portable to play games—we can’t ignore this machine’s other shortcomings and high price tag.

New HP Mini 5101 Stretches Limits of ‘Netbook’ Moniker

Nathan Edwards — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 23:01:00 -0500

While other manufacturers stretch the “netbook” designation by upping their screen sizes to 11, 12, or even 13 inches, HP seems content to stick with the 10.1 inch form factor and Atom 280 architecture. But the new Mini 5101 “Executive” deviates from the norm in several respects—including, doubtless, the price.

The HP Mini 5101 is one of the classiest-looking netbooks we’ve seen, with its anodized black brushed-aluminum shell and magnesium chassis. Most of its internal specs are standard for this year’s netbooks, including a 1.66GHz Intel Atom N280 processor, 1GB of DDR2/533 SDRAM (easily accessible and therefore upgradeable), and integrated Gigabit Ethernet. But unlike standard netbooks, which usually cap out at 160GB of storage, the 5101 can be customized with up to 320GB of standard hard drive space (with a built-in hard-drive accelerometer), or solid-state drives in either 80GB or 128GB flavors. More unusually, the Mini 5101 can be upgraded with a 1366 x 768 screen.

Other features will include a 95% full-sized keyboard, optional EV-DO/HSPA mobile broadband (via GoBi), 2MP webcam, optional Bluetooth 2.0, standard 802.11a/b/g wireless (with optional draft-n), 3 USB 2.0 ports, an SD card reader, and the normal complement of ports and connectors. The 5101 ships standard with a 4-cell, 4.5 hour battery.

HP is also offering a plethora of OS options, from the standard XP Home to more unusual choices like Vista Home Premium, SUSE 11 and FreeDOS. They will also offer accessories from an $80 port replicator with Ethernet and 5 USB ports to a $150 external DVD burner.

The Mini 5101 will start shipping in late July, with configurations starting at $440. But depending on your hard drive, screen, wireless, and accessory choices, you could end up paying a lot more than that.

ProBook 4310s

Also dropping next month is the 4310s, a 13.3-inch addition to HP’s ProBook lineup. The new ProBook comes in either black or a red-wine color HP calls “merlot,” and can be configured with a Core 2 Duo processor up to 2.8GHz or a Celeron up to 2.2GHz. Graphics options include integrated GMA 4500MHD or ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4330. It can also have up to two 500GB SATA hard drives, up to 8GB of DDR3 RAM, and be configured with a Blu-ray drive.

The 13.3-inch screen comes in two flavors: 1366x768, and 720p 1280x720. Other options include a fingerprint reader, 8-cell battery, EV-DO/HSPA mobile broadband, draft-n wireless card, and Bluetooth 2.1. The 4310s also includes 3 USB ports, VGA, HDMI, stereo audio in/out, optional modem, ExpressCard, and Gigabit Ethernet.

The 4310s has even more OS options than the 5101, including three flavors of Vista (four if you count the one with the XP downgrade), FreeDOS, SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 11, and Red Flag Linux for users in China.

The 4310s starts shipping in late July and starts at $599.

Lenovo ThinkPad T400s

Florence Ion — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 23:00:00 -0500

While there are plenty of notebooks that can lay claim to stylishness, whether it’s with a sleek, metallic chassis or a trendy graphic enveloping the chassis, the Lenovo ThinkPad T400s foregoes the fashionable aesthetics in favor of comfort, performance, and reliability.

Though it’s outfitted in simple, unassuming black matte, this lightweight gem sports a 2.53GHz Intel Core 2 Duo SP9400 processor and a 128GB SSD drive with 2GB of memory, along with a mixture of other hardware delights, including a USB/eSata port, a 14.1-inch LED-backlit WXGA display, and an optical drive. The T400s also comes equipped with an ergonomic keyboard that’s extremely comfortable for typing on for extended periods of time and includes the ThinkPad’s standard TrackPoint navigation system, as well as a Multi-touch Touchpad.

The T400s features a Magnesium alloy bottom cover and keyboard bezel to provide absorbent shock protection to the motherboard, which means you’ll never have to worry about dropping your laptop bag on the floor or accidentally banging the ThinkPad against something. Since we reviewed the 128GB SSD model (120GB and 250GB 5,400rpm HDD options are also available), there is the added bonus of having no moving parts that could be damaged in a fall. The T400s also boasts a smaller, slimmer formfactor than its predecessors, though it weighs about a pound more than the lightest ultraportables available today. We can definitely appreciate its durability, especially since it’s made out of carbon- and glass-fiber—the same material used in sports cars and commercial air planes.

Whether its benchmark scores are those of a sports car is another thing entirely. Our gaming benchmarks proved that the T400s is strictly a work and productivity machine. As far as photo editing and video encoding go, the ThinkPad surpassed our zero-point rig in the Photoshop and ProShow benchmarks, with scores that were better by 54 percent and 36 percent, respectively. But it did only slightly better than our zero-point converting video in MainConcept and actually lagged behind that aged machine in Premiere Pro—we attribute this to the fact that the T400s contains an SSD, some of which have been known to fumble in write-speed tests.

The ThinkPad is generously equipped with three USB 2.0 ports, including the aforementioned eSATA hybrid, a 5-in-1 media card, a 34mm Express Card slot, and an integrated 2MP camera. The T400s also includes a VGA port, making it easy to hook it up to most projectors, and the 6-cell battery provided a good three hours of continuous video—not the best in its class, but just enough to finish a three hour tear jerker.

The new T400s definitely extends the ThinkPad X300’s experience and incorporates everything we enjoy out of the ThinkPad family. Relying on this ultraportable as your primary machine depends on your intent; if you’re planning on doing on-the-go video editing and other compute-intensive chores, consider an alternative. But if you are looking for an all-around sturdy machine that can perform your typical work or school functions and be transported with ease, the T400s is a worthy product.

Alienware M17

Michael Brown — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 10:05:00 -0500

The Alienware brand conjures images of powerful and elite computing hardware—think of the nearly invincible antagonist from the 1987 action flick, Predator. Alienware’s M17 looks the part, but the unit we received for review was about as dangerous as E.T.

Our zero-point notebook is based on Intel’s Core 2 Duo E6700 and Nvidia’s GeForce Go 8600M, so we’ve grown accustomed to newer challengers gutting it. But for all its bulk and menacing looks, the M17 proved to be only slightly faster than that aging reference rig, and it was considerably slower in our nongaming benchmarks than the HP HDX 18 we reviewed in January.

Despite the presence of two ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3870 GPUs running in CrossFire X, the M17, which came equipped with 64-bit Vista Home Premium, turned in an anemic performance in our gaming benchmarks, with Quake 4 clocking in at 119.2fps and FEAR at just 26fps. Compare that to the Gateway P-7811 FX we examined in our October issue, which pumped out Quake 4 at 133fps and FEAR at 108fps.

We knocked the HDX 18 for its portly proportions, but the M17’s lap weight is more than half a pound heavier, despite having a single 160GB hard drive to the HP’s dual 320s, 3GB of DDR3 memory to the HP’s 4GB of DDR2, and a 17-inch screen compared to the HP’s monstrous 18.4-inch display. Could the extra GPU really weigh that much?

Outfitting this particular M17 with middle-of-the-road components—including an Intel Core 2 Duo Mobile P8400 and an 8x DVD burner—enabled Alienware to price this review unit at $1,750. You do get a long list of features for your dough, including a seven-in-one media card reader, an 802.11n Wi-Fi adapter, Blue-tooth, eSATA, a webcam, a fingerprint reader, and HDMI, but the aforementioned Gateway machine had all that (less the nominally useful fingerprint reader and
Bluetooth), delivered better gaming performance, and cost $350 less.

This being a desktop replacement, we didn’t have high expectations for the M17’s battery life, but we were surprised that its nine-cell crapped out after just one hour and 38 minutes. The six-cell battery in HP’s HDX 18 outlasted it by a full 10 minutes. And it’s a shame that the M17’s speakers sound so absolutely dreadful, because this system runs almost silently.

We do, however, dig the Alienware’s finish. The glossy piano black that’s so popular these days looks sexy—until you handle the device, and then every scratch, smudge, and fingerprint shows up like a cold sore. The M17 is wrapped in a matte black, rubberlike material that rejected our every attempt to muck it up; at least until we rummaged through a bag of greasy potato chips. Even then, it took nothing more than a dry tissue to restore its luster.

As configured, this Alienware M17 doesn’t serve any particular mission well: It’s too heavy for frequent road trips, it’s not powerful enough for hardcore gaming, and without a TV tuner or Blu-ray drive, it’s not much of a media system.