ASUS Eee PC 1025C Battery

The rear and bottom of the machine are largely featureless as well, with the latter hosting four plastic bumpers to lift the machine off of its worksurface. There are also a number of five-lobed Torx screws on the bottom for those so bold as to risk voiding their warranties for a peek at the insides. Opening up shows off a typical MacBook sight – individual black keys poking up through perfectly cut holes in the aluminum case. Noticeably, the keyboard on the new MacBook Air models is not backlit, a downgrade from prior models. Likely a cost-cutting measure, it’s also unfortunate, as Apple seemed to standardize around the backlit keyboard – it certainly makes low-light computing much easier.

The trackpad on the MacBook Air might be called large when comparing it to any notebook on the market – considering that it’s on an 11.6-inch laptop, it becomes much more impressive. Apple is one of the few companies who have managed to integrate buttons into the trackpad and get it right – when companies get it wrong, it quickly becomes the bane of a user’s existence.In order to save space but still provide a large trackpad and full-sized keyboard, the function keys on the 11.6-inch MacBook Air are half the size of those on the 13-inch MacBook Air and the rest of Apple’s mobile lineup.

As the Airs lack built-in optical drives, the eject button traditionally found on Apple laptops is replaced by the power button, which now looks like just another key on the keyboard. All the other keys appear to be identical to other MacBooks. While the keyboard will exhibit substantial flex if pressed firmly, it isn’t something even heavy typists need to worry about.Additionally, while the power button might look like just another button now – and just as easily pressed – casually powering off the machine shouldn’t be a concern as it goes to and returns from sleep rather quickly.

As for the keyboard cover, it worked well enough. I will likely keep it in my notebook bag as a screen cleaner. When transporting a notebook I can see it providing insurance against having parts of the keyboard rub against the screen. These sorts of scuffs or scratches are not as common today as they once were.The Protection Pack that I received had a flaw. My PVC hand-rest cover had about 1/2" of adhesive missing from the right hand side. As a result there was an unsightly half inch unsecured flap on the right side.I sent a quick note to Marware’s support team and had a resolution in about two hours. Upon seeing my proof of purchase, a new hand-rest cover was shipped out to me. Great service!Marware’s Protection Packs are fully recommended. For the money (about $20) it is hard not to see the value. They are a great way to keep your expensive notebook investment looking new while not detracting form the overall aesthetic.

Overall the iBook G4 12″ is an excellent value for a notebook under $1000 with a great software package and outstanding multitasking capabilities. The slot loading DVD/CDRW drive is a nice touch and Mac OS X is just beautiful. However 30GB of hard drive space may run out a lot quicker than expected. Also die hard PC users may have some difficulty adjusting to the OS X’s annoyances (as if Windows XP doesn’t have a set of its own problems) and be steered away by a limited software library. For the PC user looking for a high quality notebook at a low price, the iBook is a good choice to take the work you do on the PC on the go as it is compatible with all the Microsoft Office software (except Access).

The 12.1″ Samsung NC20 is a netbook that is just on the fringe of being the same size as regular notebooks. It offers a large keyboard, higher resolution screen than most netbooks, and long battery life that you would expect from a ULV platform. With a retail price of $549 it is set to compete against the Dell Mini 12 and HP Pavilion dv2. Overall we were pleased with the performance from the VIA Nano platform, which was a massive step up from the lackluster performance of the older C7 we saw in the Everex CloudBook. My only complaint with our review sample was it not being the much better looking black model, but that can be easily fixed by buying that version instead.

The Studio 17 is a 17-inch multimedia and gaming desktop-replacement notebook from Dell. This system can be configured with Intel Core i7 processors as well as high-end ATI Mobility Radeon graphics cards to compete against powerhouse systems like the Acer Aspire 8940G or Asus G51J. Dell has one trick up its sleeve with the Studio 17: it’s the first large consumer notebook to offer an optional multitouch display.Attentive readers might notice that we already reviewed the Dell Studio 17 last year. However, this isn’t the same Studio 17. The system we’re reviewing here is the new Studio 17 (1747) which uses a completely new chassis with 16:9 ratio widescreen display, new speakers, and support for the latest processors.

I did not buy this MacBook Pro. It was another replacement in a long line of replacements dating back to June 2006. My last unit was a Core Duo that I had for about 4 months. Unfortunately, the seal on the LCD was not airtight and dirt was able to accumulate. Having had so many problems, I called Customer Relations, who were willing to replace my Core Duo machine with the new Core 2 Duo version. While I question Apple’s quality control, their customer service has been second to none. It has taken very little effort on my part to get issues corrected. In the month I have had my Core 2 Duo machine, I have thankfully not noticed any build quality issues.The Samsung NC20 is a 12.1″ netbook and larger brother to the 10″ NC10. The NC20 offers a larger nearly-full-size keyboard, large 6-cell battery, WXGA resolution display, and the VIA Nano platform. Since the last VIA-based netbook in our office was the Everex CloudBook with less than stellar performance, the biggest thought on our minds is if the VIA Nano can compete against the trusted Intel Atom platform. In this review we see how well it compares against its netbook brethren, and if it changes our thoughts about VIA processors in notebooks.

The design of the Samsung NC20 is very clean with a consistent color scheme inside and outside the netbook with a thin border of chrome around the edges. The pearlescent white on our review sample has the same almost-dirty appearance that the original ASUS Eee PC 701 had. I think a pure white looks better or even better would be going all black. The black configuration of the NC20 looks stunning from the samples I have seen and if I were buying one that would be my only choice.Build quality is above average with durable feeling plastic throughout the body. Flex is minimal on the lower half of the notebook, usually an added perk of having such a thin frame packed with components. Flex under the keyboard structure is non-existent which adds a level of quality that you notice while typing. The screen lid has some minor flex that when squeezed shows some distortion on the panel.

User upgrades to the NC20 are limited to swapping out the RAM or hard drives. Samsung has a single panel on the bottom of the it that gives quick access to the hard drive bay and single memory slot. No “warranty void if removed” stickers were over the cover or screws.The 12.1” WXGA display on the Samsung NC20 is above average compared to most notebooks. The LED-backlighting is very even across the screen with barely any backlight bleed around the edges. Image quality is excellent thanks to the glossy surface, with vibrant colors and nice contrast levels. Vertical viewing angles are average with a narrow viewing sweet spot where colors are not washing out or inverted. Horizontal viewing angles are better, staying true at steeper angles. Screen backlight brightness was good for viewing in a bright office setting, but you would be pushing the limits trying to use the NC20 outdoors on a sunny day.

The Samsung NC20 has an almost-full-size keyboard that is comfortable to type on and very easy to transition to from larger notebooks. Compared to other netbooks the keyboard is very good, but notebooks still have an edge on it. Business notebooks in the 12-inch form factor have been able to incorporate completely full-size keyboards, but they are generally higher priced. Individual key action is smooth with no sound emitted when clicked. The ability to type covertly in a quiet classroom or office meeting could easily be added as another feature.

The NC20 offers a Synaptics touchpad that is nicely sized for a netbook. Measuring in at 2.75″ x 1.63″ it is larger than the touchpad on my Lenovo ThinkPad. The surface texture is a fine matte finish that is smooth to slide your finger across even if your hands are moist. Sensitivity is excellent once adjusted, since the default driver settings put the “PalmCheck” adjustment at max, which made movement very twitchy. The touchpad buttons are controlled through a bridged button that connected the left and right side. Feedback from it is shallow with a mild click noise when pressed.

ACER Aspire One D255 Battery

Power consumption improved over the previous A305, but since Toshiba decreased the capacity of the battery it is hard to notice any gains. The old model with the 9-cell battery managed 2 hours and 50 minutes of runtime. The A355 with its 6-cell battery, brightness set to 70%, Vista set to the Balanced profile, and wireless active managed 2 hours and 14 minutes.Toshiba designed the A355 to handle heavy GPU and CPU loads without drastically increasing the temperature of the chassis. Fan noise is just above a whisper with the fans chugging along at full speed with the system under load and inaudible under normal circumstances. As the temperatures drop the fan either stops entirely or barely spins to draw air through the notebook.The newly refreshed 16” A350 series notebook from Toshiba is a solid performer, keeping all that we loved about the first generation notebook and improving in a couple of areas. Power consumption technically improved, but since Toshiba went with a smaller capacity battery, battery life actually decreased. The glossy Fusion surface is still as scratch-resistant as it ever was, but still very smudge prone as noted before. System performance is great when compared against non-gaming notebooks, and the dual hard drives open up a ton of potential for a lot of storage. One thing Toshiba should have changed with this newer model is the starting price. Since the time the A305 was released last year many gaming notebooks have started to appear in the $1,000-$1,300 price segment. This means consumers who are shopping based on price and specifications will lean towards the “better” gaming machines if they are so near in cost.

The Toshiba Satellite U400/U405 series is a new 13.3" widescreen notebook that weighs in at just 4.85 pounds and packs solid Intel Core 2 Duo Penryn performance and a big hard drive with plenty of storage space. Add to that a stylish chassis covered in Toshiba’s new "Fusion" finish, 3GB of RAM, a webcam, and fingerprint reader and this notebook starts looking even better. Toshiba calls this notebook a "compact hero [that] balances working room with carrying comfort." Let’s take a look and see if this laptop is as good as it sounds.

The Toshiba Satellite U400/U405 series is available with a range of Intel processors (from the 1.73GHz Pentium Dual-Core T2370 up to the T8300 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo Penryn). There is only one 13.3" screen offering, a 1280×800 WXGA "TruBrite" glossy display. The notebook can take up to 4GB of RAM and Toshiba offers 32-bit versions of Microsoft Windows Vista SP1. The system is priced starting at $767.20 at the time of this writing.Like most notebooks with a 13.3" widescreen display the U405 is on the border of the thin-and-light and ultra-portable categories. With a weight of more than four and a half pounds it isn’t the lightest notebook in its class. Likewise, since the notebook is 1 inch thick at its thinnest point the U405 falls in the "middle of the pack" among recent 13.3" systems. While the U405 might be a little thicker and heavier than Apple’s MacBook Air or Lenovo’s ThinkPad X300, the U405 is a far more consumer friendly notebook with the perfect balance of form and function.

The exterior of the U405 is constructed of plastic yet it felt exceptionally solid. There was no flex to the chassis even when significant pressure was applied to the corners of the notebook. The U405 also uses the high-gloss "Fusion" finish which is an imprinted design that is both durable and attractive. The Fusion finish is one of the most durable glossy finishes I’ve seen on a notebook and easily rivals the quality of the "Imprint" finish found on HP notebooks.While I generally like the horizontal line design imprint on the U405, the finish isn’t just glossy … it’s reflective. This will be quite appealing to some consumers and ghastly for others. When you open the LCD lid on this laptop the back of the display basically looks like a mirror as seen in the photo below.

The Intel X3100 integrated graphics with 64MB-251MB of dynamically allocated shared memory provides enough video horsepower for a business machine. The primary benefit of integrated graphics is extended battery life and reduced heat. However, more and more 13.3" notebooks are offering dedicated graphics cards in high-end configurations. For example, the Dell XPS M1330 is available with nVidia GeForce 8400M GS graphics … which provides basically twice the video/graphics performance compared to the Intel X3100 chipset.In any case, the Tecra M8 is a business notebook and not a "gaming machine" so the lack of dedicated graphics isn’t a deal killer. In fact, the reduced weight and heat as well as increased battery life should be considered as reasons for wanting integrated graphics.

The optical drive in particular is quite thin yet still remains very sturdy. The optical drive (manufactured by LG and similar to drives used in some Lenovo notebooks) is actually as good or better in terms of build quality than some drives we’ve seen in larger budget notebooks. The optical drive was relatively quiet during operation and drive noise was not an issue while viewing DVDs.

The LCD cover only comes in one color for the M8: titanium silver. Essentially the cover looks like it’s coated in gray paint with fine silver metal flakes. The same titanium silver paint job is carried over onto the palm rests and around the keyboard. Overall, I must say the titanium silver paint looks and feels much more durable than the glossy colored plastics seen on many other Toshiba notebooks. Fingerprints aren’t nearly as visible on the M8 compared to the Toshiba U305. The rest of the case plastics are made of matte black plastic.Who burns music CDs for the car? According to Jobs, most of us have iPods now, so that is taken care of. What about installing software? Well, we can now do that wirelessly, too. Apple innovated and created something called "Remote Disk." Click on it in the finder of the MacBook Air and it shows Macs and PCs in the vicinity that have special software loaded on them that comes on a disk with the MacBook Air. The software is Mac and PC compatible. It amounts to the user picking a machine and asking to borrow its optical drive, and when you do that, the machine that will lend its optical drive gets a request to accept, and once accepted, the user on the MacBook air will be able to see what’s in their optical drive. In fact, you can even load the Mac installer disk into a PC and send it over wirelessly to the MacBook Air!

Although my old Dell Inspiron was very portable, the keyboard was cramped. Although I was able to adapt quite well to it, it always felt more comfortable typing on a larger keyboard. The MacBook Air ships with a keyboard pretty well identical to the keyboard of the MacBook. This makes sense, seeing as they’re both 13.3" notebooks. Apple decided not to compromise on the keyboard and include a full size one. This was a good decision, in my opinion, as many ultraportables cut the weight down and decrease the dimensions of the machine at the expense of a comfortable keyboard. The keyboard on the MacBook Air is extremely comfortable, and you could pretty well type on it all day without feeling uncomfortable.The keys on the MacBook Air seem to be slightly more responsive than those on the MacBook, but my Apple Bluetooth keyboard is by far the best keyboard I’ve ever used in terms of feel. That being said, the MacBook Air’s keyboard is in between the two, but still far superior to those found on most other laptops. The closest competitors in terms of keyboards would have to be found on the Thinkpads. All in all, the keyboard on the MacBook Air is a pleasure to use.

To add to this, the keyboard is backlit. On an angle, the backlighting is kind of ugly because the light pokes through the sides of the keys where it’s not supposed to, but overall the keyboard backlighting is a desirable feature. Only in a really dark room do I ever choose to activate it, however, because your battery life will suffer.The track pad on the MacBook Air is often noted as being "generous" and "huge." You would think this is a good thing, but I found it really to be more of a nuisance than anything. Yes, there is more space to move around on, but I found the MacBook and the MacBook Pro to offer trackpads that were the perfect size. But isn’t bigger always better, you ask? Well yes, the larger trackpad on the MacBook Air does offer many advantages in terms of speed while moving around, but there is a nasty side effect. Because the track pad is so large, often when I’m typing, my cursor will randomly shift 3 or 4 lines up. Seeing as when I’m typing I normally look at the black board or the professor in class, etc., by the time I look down at my screen, I’ll have inserted an entire paragraph somewhere else in my document! D’Oh! I thought I would get used to it, but I still make this error even after a few months of ownership. I will admit that it happens much less now than it did when I first got the machine, but I think that had the track pad been made slightly smaller I would not be making this error! This is especially frustrating when typing longer documents. I suppose what happens is that while resting my wrists on the MacBook Air while typing, my arms rub against the trackpad and the trackpad thinks it’s a "click" so my cursor moves. I have not tried experimenting with the track pad sensitivity – perhaps lowering the sensitivity will fix this problem.

The track pad was most likely made so large so that the user has ample room to make use of the Multitouch gestures implemented by Apple first in the iPhone, and now in the MacBook Air. Also, the new MacBook Pros have recently adopted this new feature. These gestures are not as big a deal as they were made out to be. They are still somewhat helpful under certain circumstances, however. For example, suppose you’re viewing a PDF document and the text is too small to read. Simply place two fingers on the track pad and spread them apart to magnify. To zoom out, simply pinch your two fingers together. In the control panel of the MacBook Air, Apple has included some helpful videos to show you how to work the touch pad. Another useful gesture is the triple finger swipe in Safari – this gesture allows the user to go back one page. These are examples of very simple gestures that allow the user to accomplish common tasks. I wouldn’t use the gestures as a way to sell someone the Air if I had to, though. Although it’s a leap forward, it’s only a small add on from what the MacBook has. There’s also a simple gesture that allows the user to rotate an image, but seeing as I rarely need to rotate images, this isn’t a very useful feature for me, but may be of use to the reader. Overall, the gestures are a nice add on, but nothing to stop the presses for.

Toshiba PA3356U-2BRS Battery

Build quality is hit or miss depending on what part of the notebook you are looking at. The quality of the finish is excellent, with a thick layer of glossy black paint that appears to be scratch resistant. On the flip side, the plastic used to construct the notebook suffers from abnormal amounts of flex–a side effect of its lightweight construction. The palm rest and lower half of the case flex inward when you grip the notebook to carry it around, and even resting your palms on the palm rest makes them bend in slightly. The screen cover shows similar flex and when gripped firmly makes the display show signs of color distortion around the edges and center. The screen itself also has some issues in how it is mounted, showing a pressure spot in the bottom corner that “flashes” when the screen jiggles on your lap or desk surface.

Upgrading the components on the A605 is more difficult that the average notebook, with half of the RAM soldered to the motherboard and no access panel for the hard drive. While most business users probably won’t be modifying company issued hardware, regular users who buy this notebook might be upset.The 12.1″ display is average compared to other business ultra-portable notebooks, but below average if you compare it to the screens on larger notebooks. Colors are bright and vibrant thanks to some help from the LED-backlighting. Overall brightness is adequate for viewing in an office setting but not bright enough for using the notebook outside under direct sunlight. The screen is evenly lit across the entire surface, with the only hotspot showing near the screen hinge attachment points … which pinch the screen slightly. Vertical viewing angles are average, with colors quickly washing out or distorting outside of the viewing sweet spot. Horizontal viewing angles are much better, staying accurate at steep angles, only dimming as it rotates further away from you.

The A605 features a nearly full-size keyboard with the primary keys being the same size as on a larger notebook, but the surrounding keys are condensed to fit inside the frame of the Portege. The keyboard is comfortable to type on, but suffers from the same flex issue as the palm rest and notebook bottom. Under moderate pressure the entire keyboard surface will sink in, giving you a trampoline feeling as you type. Individual key action is smooth, giving off a very mild click noise when pressed.What can you realistically expect in this department? The integrated speaker works well enough to show someone a funny YouTube video as well as to hear routine system sounds. If you’re serious about audio, don’t depend on the integrated speaker. It is moderately loud and the quality is not bad, but like any laptop, the sound is weak compared to external speakers.

Many users are experiencing overheating problems with the MacBook Air. A reported issue is that as the machine heats up, it shuts down one of its processing cores, and a sluggish computing experience results. In general, neither the first or second MacBook Air I used suffered from frequent overheating. After, say, an hour and a half of use, the MacBook Air would get hotter than it should be getting, but I wouldn’t be worried about it. Most laptops I’ve used get hot after using them for a while, and the Air is no exception. Even on a hard surface though (not a bed or a couch), the MacBook Air would get warm enough that my palms became a little sweaty (gross, I know), but I still wouldn’t call it a problem. MacBooks and MacBook Pros that I’ve used all get hot, too, and unless your MacBook Air is burning you or damaging your furniture, I wouldn’t worry about it. I would conclude that for less than an hour of use, the Air will run very cool, but after that, particularly with WiFi on and the screen bright (i.e. maximum power usage), it will get warm, but it will never (and should never) become uncomfortable.

In general, the fans on the MacBook Air will run at 2500 rpm. Under normal usage, the MacBook Air is actually the quietest computer I’ve ever owned. At 2500 rpm, the fans are pretty inaudible, even if you put your head right up to the machine. In a very quiet room, you can hear a kind of "whine" but it’s pretty inaudible and not very annoying. So in that sense, the machine is not 100% silent, but it’s pretty close. It should be noted that my first machine did not "whine". It’s not quite annoying as a "whine" (and it’s nothing like the CPU whining described in some early MacBook Pros), it’s more of a "beeeeeep," but the issue isn’t severe enough for me to call Apple. In a normal room, it appears to be silent, but the sound is audible in a library.

Occasionally, under heavy usage, the fans will crank up to >6000 rpm. I don’t think this is anything to worry about because for me, it happens very rarely and only under intense usage. Many users have reported fan speeds in this range while viewing YouTube videos, but neither of the two MacBook Airs I used suffered from this problem and I can confirm first hand that I have yet to see a MacBook Air that revs up its fans under such light usage. At 6000 rpm, the fans are obviously audible, but nothing that will drive you crazy when it does happen. It does not sound like a rocket ship about to take off from your desk. The sound is pretty annoying, though, especially in a quiet room.

Unfortunately, the battery in the MacBook Air is not meant to be replaced by the user. This was probably done in order to save space – that’s the only advantage I can think of with respect to having such a battery. When it dies, you’ll have to take it in to Apple to get it changed. Supposedly, however, the battery is very easy to replace by the user – it merely involves removing a few screws. Personally, when I eventually need to replace my battery I will be taking it in and not experimenting on my own. It’s something I don’t really have to think about now because the computer is so new, but I’m sure I will be bothered by it in the future. Knock on wood, my battery still has a long way to go! The fact that it’s non user-replaceable isn’t really a problem for me, and it probably won’t be for a large number of people. Realistically, how often do you swap batteries? I don’t even own an extra battery, so it wouldn’t even be an option for me! But many frequent travelers surely must carry a spare with them, and they will be disappointed with this aspect of the notebook.

Five hours of battery life with WiFi is what you will get out of this thing according to Apple. Well, not really. Usually Apple underestimates the battery life in order not to get flamed by reviewers, but this time, they haven’t done that. I feel like if I really tried had to conserve battery life by turning my wireless off and dimming down the screen, I could maybe squeeze out 5 hours, but realistically, with WiFi on and my screen on medium/low, I will get between 3.5-4 hours, depending on usage. Again, sometimes I’ll get more, like 4.5 for example, but on a day like that, my WiFi will rarely be on. But on a day where my WiFi is on constantly, I probably won’t get more than 4 hours. Apple should have quoted the battery life at 4 hours in my opinion. Seeing as this laptop is meant to be brought everywhere, I’d prefer to have more battery life. Six hours with WiFi would be optimal. I usually bring the charger with me because it weighs almost nothing and my university is very saturated with plugs. During a full day of school, I’ll usually be typing and I’ll only turn the WiFi on for maybe 15 minutes each hour or so, and I am able to get a good 4-4.5 hours, but this number will vary drastically based on the usage. But again, you will most likely not get 5 hours like Apple says.

The Toshiba Satellite T135 is a stylish ultraportable that looks like a standard notebook from up top, but is much thinner when you see its side profile. Toshiba keeps the profile only a fraction of an inch thicker than the ports on the side of the notebook, though this is done in large part by cutting out things like an ExpressCard slot and optical drive. For the average user this notebook has all the advantages of a standard computer–a 13.3″ display and full-size keyboard–but none of the bulk. The color scheme looks nice, although the red is more of a slight purple or pink than what a deep red should look like. Toshiba offers multiple color schemes for this notebook, so if the red doesn’t tickle your fancy there are other options like white or black to choose from as well.

Build quality is very nice despite the very thin chassis. Flex and squeaks are kept to a minimum on the lower half of the body, and a metal plate over the hard drive helps keep the vital components safe. The screen cover feels durable as well, although it has just a hair of flex near the section next to the screen hinges which creaked if you gripped it over that spot. If you don’t have a death grip over the notebook, it shouldn’t present any sort of problems. The glossy finish on the body holds up very well to scratches, which is a must since you will probably be wiping it down frequently to keep it clean of fingerprints and smudges. The pattern does a good job of hiding small prints, but it will eventually hit a critical mass that will need a microfiber rub-down.

In order to remove the battery from the back of the R300 you have to have three hands, there are two spring loaded locks and you have to "pop" the battery out while holding those two locks open — a tough chore. On the R200 there is only one lock and the battery pops open. Also the R200 has an optional external battery attachement which extends the battery life, the R300 does not.Due to the increased thickness and an inclined base on the R300 there is a gap between the palm rest and the table. Due to the compactness of the keyboard your fingers occupy the entire keyboad area — after several minutes of typing I experienced some discomfort in typing. The R300 felt really small when used in the lap, make sure to keep your legs together, it’s a little tough to use the R300 if it’s balanced on one leg.

Although the R300 has less annoying junk software than you might get from a Dell consumer notebook, the built-in HDD protection was very sensitive and annoying. The sensor warning screen pops up almost every instance in which the laptop moves (even on a horizontal table).3DMark 2006 measured the graphics performance of a PC. The score received on 3DMark06 was 148, which is almost off the charts low. We won’t compare to other laptops, the comparison is somewhat embarassing! Below is a screenshot of the result:

Samsung AA-PB2NC6B Battery

Thermal performance of the Toshiba A305 was above average, with mild fan noise at low and high speeds, and the notebook staying relativity cool during game play. One area that did get kind of warm that is worth mentioning is the touchpad, which would reach almost 100 degrees Fahrenheit after the notebook had been on for a while.

Battery Life

Our review unit came with the larger 9-cell extended battery, which ended up not performing as well as we would have hoped because of constant background processes. With the notebook on the balanced power profile, and brightness to 50 percent, the notebook managed 2 hours and 50 minutes before it had to be shut down.The Toshiba Satellite A305 is an excellent upgrade and overhaul to the older lackluster A205 notebook. The design looks great, the finish is awesome, the performance is outstanding, and the price is much lower than expected. I would have no problem recommending this notebook to friends and family, and right now it is almost too tempting to go out and buy one for myself.The Tecra A9 is the latest high-end business notebook that Toshiba offers to compete against 15.4" notebooks such as the Lenovo ThinkPad T61, HP 8510p, and the Dell Latitude D830. Many notebooks in this business category are designed to hold up to the daily rigors of a business environment, and the Tecra A9 is no different. It’s claimed to have a durable chassis, protection for the hard drive, as well as a spill resistant keyboard. Let’s see how this notebook stands up in our testing.

The touchpad has a nice mild matte texture, and worked just as you would expect. The included drivers give you plenty of customization options for all the touch zones on the touchpad, as well as adjusting speed and sensitivity. The default settings had the sensitivity slightly low requiring a heavy pressure, which I adjusted upwards to allow a softer touch.The pointing stick worked just as expected, and had plenty of adjustments in the control panel. The only feature that seemed missing was a center button for the pointer to allow scrolling. It was comfortable to use, but my main preference on this size of notebook is the touchpad.The speakers included with this notebook are average for built-in speakers on business notebooks, and below average compared to most consumer machines. Bass and midrange were lacking, but upper frequency tones came through clearly. Volume levels were acceptable, but for anything over the standard Windows notification chimes, I would recommend wearing headphones for greater listening pleasure.

Listed below are the benchmarks run on the Tecra A9 to give you an idea how it compares to other notebooks in its class:Daily performance with the Tecra A9 went hand in hand with the included software from Toshiba. The function key dropdown menu for example brought the machine to a halt as it slid down, from either poor coding or lack of 3D acceleration. This made simple adjustments like increasing your screen brightness take 5-10 seconds for one notch, where it should take a fraction of a second. Thankfully you could uninstall this program, and still retain all adjustments, just without an onscreen notification.Excessive bloatware on the notebook was present, but thankfully didn’t put up a fight when removing it through the Vista control panel. It wasn’t as bad as some notebooks we have reviewed in the past, but I would still tell users to remove most of it before they start using the computer on a regular basis.

Under normal use the Tecra A9 was fairly tame in terms of noise and heat production. Fan noise was minimal even after prolonged computer use, with only minor spikes of noise under more tasking situations. Benchmarking the system for example made the system increase its fan speed over normal situations, but even then it was not bothersome.Heat was contained to very reasonable levels, never getting too hot in any "skin contact regions". The palmrest and keyboard stayed only a few degrees higher than room temperature, and the bottom was only hot near the exhaust fan outlet. Its larger size compared to the Tecra M9 looks to have helped out some, since its smaller brother was very warm in our previous testing. Below are images showing the temperatures in degrees Fahreheit while the Tecra A9 was running inside a room with an ambient temperature of 72 degrees:

With screen brightness at 80 percent, wireless enabled, "balanced" profile set, and accessing web pages on occasion the system managed 2 hours and 40 minutes on its 6-cell battery. Manufacturers estimated battery life was listed as "up to 3.97hrs", which I felt was a bit high.Speaker quality seemed below average, with a very low peak volume level. Even with the system volume and application volume maxed, it didn’t sound much louder than most systems at 50-60%. My best guess as to the reason behind this is the super small speaker drivers and location underneath the palmrest. Sound quality was average for a notebook of this size, with weak bass and midrange audio. Headphones should be a required accessory for this notebook.

The full-size keyboard is comfortable to type on and offers excellent support even under very strong pressure. I found the palmrest size to be just perfect to rest my wrists without causing any stress points while typing. The individual keys had a reasonable springy action and, while not as stiff as other keyboard, is still very responsive. Each key had a non-cupped flat surface, similar to a Chiclet-style keyboard but without the sharp drop-off between each key. Typing noise was minimal, with very little sound emitted when each key was triggered. Consumers who are thinking about buying this notebook for typing long documents should have no problems whatsoever.

The Synaptics touchpad was a slight disappointment in that it had a very slow refresh rate. Compared to other touchpads where you can draw circles quick enough to the point where the cursor starts to test the refresh rate of the panel, this particular version reminded us of those old mouse trails. Replacing the drivers with the latest ones offered on the Synaptics website was of no use, since it exhibited the same problem with those as well. The good news though is with the drivers uninstalled, the slow refresh speeds were gone, meaning that it is entirely a driver problem. Going without the drivers isn’t the best option for most uses though, since you lose helpful features like scrolling, and corrective features that equalize movement on the X and Y axis. Not counting the driver problems, the touchpad wasn’t that bad to use with a great surface texture that allowed you to glide your fingertip effortlessly across the surface. The touchpad buttons could have been improved, as they are part of a single span that pivots at the center. If you normally center your finger by feel alone, you might accidentally click on the middle (which doesn’t move) or click on the wrong side.

Port selection is fairly good when compared to ultraportable notebooks, but without an ExpressCard slot it is lacking compared to regular notebooks. The T135 includes three USB ports, VGA and HDMI-out, LAN, audio jacks, and a Kensington lock slot. Expansion slots include just the 6-in-1 SDHC-compatible card reader.The Toshiba Portege R series is the slim line series from the company’s offering. The series started out with the R100 and has now spanned all the way to the Portege R400 tablet convertible. The Portege R300 is available in the Canadian market, it can be purchased via Toshiba.ca or found on retailers such as CDW.ca.

Out of the box you’ll notice the Portege R300 is a really small laptop that unfortunately comes with no recovery CD’s (which is common with Toshiba). About the only thing you do get is a Certificate of Authority for Microsoft OneNote 2003 and an A/C adapter.The power switch is located on the front side of the laptop. There is also an optional ‘lock’ to lock the power button and prevent an accidental push of the power — which makes you wonder why they put the power switch there in the first place if it’s so easy to bump. The power button is easy to use but feels soft, it is based on a self release mechanism so once you push the button to one side it pops back.

The front side of the notebook has the most control options. As with the Tecra S4 series, the volume button is a push type instead of a dial type that you get with the R100 and R200 series. It takes some getting used to and might be a little annoying for some. There is only one speaker so you get mono instead of stereo sound, which is noticeable. However, the onboard audio (realtek) supports stereo sound so you can hook up some external speakers for better sound quality.The R300 has three USB ports in total with two on the left side and one on the right. The external VGA port is also seen on the left side. With the Toshiba R200/R100 the VGA port was on the back panel, which I found easier for connecting to a projector or a monitor. If you were to conenct a USB key or a mouse and network cable along with a monitor you will notice shortage of room on the left side. And if you are one of those poor souls who got the Targus VGA lock for securing your laptop…good luck.

The keyboard layout is pretty compact with no extra buttons on the keyboard area except for the finger print reader. The touchpad is sensitive and works well, however the buttons for the mouse did not depress as far or feel as nice as the R200/R100 series.On the back panel, look at the difference between the hinges. The R300 screen goes all the way to the end therefore the hinge design is much better than its predecessor. There is no unnecessary wobbling. Also, look at the position of the various ports for easy plug-in and removal with the R200, it’s a shame the R300 moved all of these ports.

SAMSUNG AA-PBPN6LB Battery

Toshiba includes an ALPS touchpad on the A605, which is quite large for a 12” notebook. It is quick and responsive, with very little lag noticed during our tests. Fingertip sensitivity is much better than older ALPS touchpads we have seen, is slightly under a Synaptics model. The touchpad surface has a rough matte finish, which is easily to slide across even if your finger is slightly moist from sweat. The touchpad buttons were disappointing, being very small and having shallow feedback when pressed. The buttons are mounted flush with the chrome trim under the touchpad and are so tightly fit that they rub against the edges when pressed. Port selection on the A605 is good for an ultra-portable notebook, including three USB ports, VGA, LAN, audio jacks, and eSATA through a combo port. While HDMI or DisplayPort might be handy, many business users still use VGA for projectors and it is more than capable for connecting the notebook to a secondary monitor. The bottom of the notebook also features a docking connector, for further port expansion.

System performance of the Toshiba Portege A605 falls somewhere between a full-size notebook and a netbook. The ultra-low voltage SU9400 processor sacrifices speed at the cost of performance to gain battery life. For normal system activities such as typing documents, working on spreadsheets, surfing the Web, or even watching SD video the system shows no signs of lagging. Light gaming or HD movies will stress the system, pegging the processor and drastically increasing power consumption. HD movies were very playable, with most 720P and 1080P content putting the processor under a 45-60% load depending on the amount of motion on screen. Games are limited to older things such as the original Half-Life. The Portege A605 is equipped with a single mono speaker that was surprisingly loud … even when compared to other low-end notebooks with stereo speakers. It lacks bass and midrange, but considering how bad it could have been, it surprised us in the office during our music test. For listening to music, viewing YouTube clips, or watching a movie it would probably work fine, but as always, headphones are one of the best accessories for notebook users.

Battery
Toshiba includes an ultra-low voltage Intel Core 2 Duo processor inside the A605 Portege, which we thought would help in the battery life department. Under normal operating conditions the notebook floats around 9 to 11 watts of power consumption, which sounds low, but not as low as some larger notebooks. The Lenovo ThinkPad T400 for example consumes only 8.5 watts of power when under light processor loads, and that specific configuration had the high performance T9600 processor. In our battery test with the screen at 70% backlight, wireless active, and Vista set to the “Balanced” profile, the A605 stayed on for 5 hours and 27 minutes. While this is still a respectable figure, we think it could have reach a much greater time with better power management.

One stand-out feature of the A605 is the super small 45W power adapter. It is great for traveling, since it doesn’t add that much weight to your bag, and if you get a different power cord for it, takes up very little space. The downside to such a small power adapter though is the very slow charge rate on the notebook, taking hours to complete a charge if the notebook is on. Overall the Portege A605 doesn’t get that hot under normal use, and only develops hot spots under prolonged benchmarks. The Intel Core 2 Dup SU9400 helps keep processor heat output to a minimum, with a 10 watt maximum consumption rate. Under normal use the palm rests stay relatively cool, about 4 to 10 degrees above our room temperature of 74 degrees Fahrenheit. The one hotspot we found is located at the top left of the keyboard, near the power jack. Fan noise is minimal, with the fan actually being off under most of the time. When the fan is on the only time you notice it is running is when you feel hot air blowing on your arm from the vent on the side.

The Toshiba Portege A605 offers good looks and a small form factor, but compromises build quality to achieve its very low weight. The palm rest, keyboard, and screen all exhibit a good amount of flex, which doesn’t bode well for thoughts of durability. Looking past the flexible chassis, the notebook does offer a built-in optical drive, and still keeps the overall weight to just above 3lbs. For a business traveler who only cares about that, this notebook falls right in the weight range of most netbooks. With the current list price of $1,399 it is priced against the Lenovo ThinkPad X200 or about double the price of an HP Pavilion dv2. Overall I think the Portege A605 offers a lot potential for a customer interested in a good looking business notebook, but it has a few areas that could see some improvement.The 13-inch Toshiba Satellite T135 is an Intel CULV-powered ultraportable boasting long battery life, a thin chassis, and a very low weight. Powered by the 1.3GHz SU4100 and Intel X4500 integrated graphics this notebook is a big step above netbooks but still offers many similar features that are attractive to people who don’t want to lug around a full-size notebook. In this review we see how well the Toshiba Satellite T135 performs in our tests, and if it is really worth the price premium over a standard netbook.

After releasing the latch and raising the LCD you are greeted with spacious palm rests, a large touchpad, and way more media buttons than you typically see on a 15.4" notebook. The design itself is very angular with just some light rounding to otherwise sharp edges. The exterior is all black and light gray plastic but unfortuantely the plastic feels thin and quite cheap. Tap anywhere on the notebook with your fingernail and you’ll hear a hollow sound. If you run your fingertips over the joints where two peices of plastic meet (such as around the optical drive or along the bottom of the notebook) you will feel the sharp edges of the plastic where the material doesn’t fit flush. Overall, the fit and finish of the F45 has room for improvement.

The 4000mAh Lithium Ion battery that comes with the F45 provided 3 hours and 4 minutes of battery life with the screen turned down to half brightness and wirelessly browsing the web. While those numbers aren’t the most impressive we’ve seen they are quite good for a standard battery in a 15.4" notebook. That said, you may want to consider an extra battery or using the AC adapter if you plan to watch a full-length DVD movie on this notebook.

One area where the Qosmio F45 exceeded expectations was with heat and noise. This notebook remained remarkable cool to the touch and quiet even during benchmarkingwhen the system was stressed and producing the most heat. Although the system fan on the F45 reamains on most of the time, it is whisper quiet and only becomes noticeable in a perfectly silent room or if the fan speeds up to the maximum setting. Despite the apparently thin plastics used in the F45′s construction, there were no hot spots to be found anywhere on the system during use. Even the palm rests and memory slot cover remained cool to the touch. If heat and noise are an issue for you then the F45 may be the answer to your prayers.

Overall our first impressions of the Toshiba Qosmio F45 are mixed. The F45 has a gorgeous screen, good built-in speakers and dedicated multi-media buttons that make the experieince of controling your movies, music, and web browsing second to none. That said, the plastics used in construction look cheap and the processor and gaming performance are sub-par given the price range.Bottom line, the Qosmio F45 has some nice features like solid speakers and innovative media and web browser controls. Unfortunately, at the starting price of $1,299.99 there are many other notebooks with far superior performance … including some of Toshiba’s own Satellite and Tecra notebooks.The Satellite A215 series is a new line of consumer notebooks being offered by Toshiba. They sport variations of the AMD Turion64 X2 CPUs. The A215 is a being positioned as a multimedia notebook with its large 15.4” glossy screen, large hard drives, card reader and webcam. The A215 definitely has some hits and misses. All of which we will take a more in-depth look at in the following review of the A215-S4757.

One particularly nice design feature about the F45 is the front-mounted slot-loading optical drive. We can honestly say that this optical drive is the quietest slot-loading drive we’ve ever seen. Most slot-loading drives, particularly in notebooks, sound like power drills grinding plastic whenever you load or eject a disk. Although these drives look cool we usually aren’t crazy about them because they make so much noise. That is not the case with the slot-loading drive in our F45. Although the drive does make some noise when loading or ejecting a disk, the noise is hardly disruptive and actually quieter than some "traditional" tray-type optical drives. We really want to thank Toshiba engineers for putting such a nice slot-loading drive into the F45.

The glossy 15.4" widescreen XGA TruBrite display is a genuinely impressive LCD. The 1280 x 800 pixel resolution may be a bit low for HD video, but both images and video appeared sharp with excellent contrast and bold color. There was no light leakage to speak of and both the horizontal and vertical viewing agles are reasonably good … certainly a great display for watching movies or viewing digital photos.Overall, you would be hard pressed to find a better 15.4" notebook display among current notebooks, regardless of price, than the one used in the Qosmio F45.

The intergrated 1.3 megapixel webcam provides reasonable resolution and does a pretty good job capturing accurate color with a good frame rate. Video images are a little grainy, particularly in low light, but the webcam is certainly more than capable of solid video conference usage.
The twin Harman Kardon speakers located above the keyboard are a welcome addition to this entertainment notebook. The built-in subwoofer also adds impressive bass to the system. The combination of the speakers and subwoofer provide strong highs and righ, deep lows which make listening to music and watching movies as very enjoyableexperience.

DELL Latitude E6220 Battery www.dearbattery.co.uk

The newly redesigned Inspiron 15R offers a much cleaner and sleeker look and feel compared to past models. Similar to the Adamo-series, the layout has a hinge-forward design with the screen positioned just slightly in front of the back edge of the chassis. This has the added benefit of moving the screen closer to the keyboard and bringing the action to you. The outside appearance of the new 15R is very stylish, with a faux-brushed metal screen cover. The look gives the appearance of metal, although with an easier to clean painted surface. This look it also shared inside the notebook, with the palmrest and keyboard trim.After deciding on a machine I poked around the Internet for coupons and discounts, though I did not find many for the Latitude line. I did discover that Dell was offering $400 off the price of each Latitude configured over $1,600 and figured it wouldn’t get much better than that. Dell’s customization and order process is very straightforward and I made sure to spend plenty of time agonizing over choices like integrated versus discrete graphics or 9-cell versus 6-cell batteries. All in all it was a smooth and pleasant shopping experience. The machine arrived just over a week after I ordered it.

Another of the features of the Inspiron 1420, at least when configured with Windows Vista Home Premium, is the ability to play DVD movies (or if you selected the Blu-Ray removable drive, high definition Blu-Ray content).I wanted to mention the CompleteCare concept separately, specifically as it relates to the theft protection aspect. Theft protection on the Dell Inspiron line of laptops is provided by the use of LoJack for Laptops. This is the same LoJack that provides protection for your car or motorcycle using a radio transponder.LoJack for laptops works differently. Separately from your computer you receive a disk containing the LoJack software. From several articles I have read online, once installed the software will periodically contact the LoJack center and let it know that it’s around. Should your laptop be stolen, you call or go online and let them know, and when your laptop goes online, it will say “Hi, I’m here” and LoJack and the appropriate authorities will be able to go get it.

The laptop scored a 1,354 in 3DMark06 with the default drivers. Screenshots of the test are shown below. I retested after installing the 162.13 Forceware drivers that I used during the Lost Planet: Extreme Condition testing and scored a 1419. I then went as far as to shutdown the Sidebar and other unnecessary programs, and scored a 1,444.The minimum transfer rate was 16.7 MB/s, the maximum transfer rate was 45.6 MB/s, and the average transfer rate was 34.8 MB/s. The access time recorded by HDTune was 18.9 ms, the burst transfer rate was 64.4 MB/s, and CPU usage was 5.1%.The minimum transfer rate was 16.7 MB/s, the maximum transfer rate was 45.6 MB/s, and the average transfer rate was 34.8 MB/s. The access time recorded by HDTune was 18.9 ms, the burst transfer rate was 64.4 MB/s, and CPU usage was 5.1%.And now for something completely different, what you’ve all been waiting for, gaming impressions.

One of the biggest, if not THE biggest, improvements to the Inspiron 1420 over the previous Inspiron e1405 is the inclusion of a discrete graphics chipset. The Inspiron 1420 gives you the option of an nVidia GeForce 8400M GS graphics processing unit with 128 MB of GDDR3 onboard RAM, and the ability to use additional system memory if necessary. A discrete graphics chipset has several distinct advantages over an integrated chipset like the Intel GMA X3100 that is standard with the new Santa Rosa platform upon with the Inspiron 1420 and its siblings are based.It is much more powerful and will allow you to run games at the full resolution of the screen with many of the different quality options at higher levels. It also provides for offloading video processing work from the CPU, which allows for smoother and higher quality video. It will, however, use more power while gaming and will shorten the battery life. But for the occasional gamers out there, this is a worthwhile tradeoff.

I played two different games and attempted a third for the review process. I used World of Warcraft with the Burning Crusade expansion and all the most recent updates, and Half-Life 2, again with all the most recent updates. I also tried to play the DirectX 10 trial for Lost Planet: Extreme Condition, but that didn’t work out so well.I went right over to Google and got the link to my preferred antivirus software, and also went and got Windows Update working on getting my operating system current. Once that was done I restarted, installed my antivirus, and uninstalled McAfee. Then I set about making my usual computer configuration. I activated file sharing from the Network menu in the Windows Logo / Start menu so that I could download files from my desktop system. I installed a suite of Windows Sidebar gadgets that I figured would suit me on the laptop (list is included below). And I downloaded and installed a bevy of utilities and programs to run diagnostics of the 1420 to answer mine and other peoples’ questions in the online community.

I’ll discuss briefly the major user interface components – the screen, keyboard, and trackpad.Having used many laptops and recently being bombarded with the shiny-screen epidemic, I knew that for me there was no choice but to option the anti-glare screen. I wasn’t as much concerned about resolution as I was ability to use the laptop in a bright room with windows or lights as I would find in my apartment, office, or in random hotel rooms across the United States.When the invoice for my machine became available, I was immediately concerned that I would be receiving a problem screen. My computer had received its 14.1” anti-glare 1280×800 display from Chi Mei Optronics, which I had read online provided a less than stellar experience in the Latitude D630. My concerns were unfounded, however.I found the laptop screen to be bright and the colors good. The default settings do leave some colors, especially bright greens, somewhat washed out, but that is easily fixed by the multitude of tweaking options available in the nVidia control panel. A forum member asked me if the screen is clear or is grainy like other Dell Inspirons. I have limited experience with other Dells but I have not experienced anything that I would call graininess. As you can see, there is some light leakage. I took the picture in a darkened room so it probably looks worse than it is. I didn’t find that this impacted my enjoyment of the visuals any.

The horizontal viewing angle is, for my planned usage, excellent. I don’t have a protractor to measure the angle, but I can position myself to look across the laptop from the front left corner of the base to the bottom right corner of the screen and I can still easily see the text onscreen, although it is somewhat darker.Inside the E6410 the look is matte black on everything besides the keyboard and model lettering. Compared to what you might find in a consumer model, there are no glossy or reflective surfaces besides the small chrome lettering on the Dell branding logo. This is nice if you use your notebook in brightly lit areas where reflections can be distracting. It also means that smudges and fingerprints won’t be a problem from day-to-day use.

Build quality is very good and if feels very durable with the metal panels top and bottom. In the business notebook market not all makers have stuck with metal body panels. After the T60-series ThinkPad, Lenovo switched to a plastic top cover, which has stuck for every generation since then. The HP EliteBook though keeps the metal top cover and retains the image and feel of a higher-grade notebook over a standard plastic consumer model.The Latitude E6410 chassis felt very well built and resisted any flexing in the usual spots. The palmrest and touchpad showed no signs of sag under heavy prodding. The keyboard directly over the optical drive stayed firm, even though most notebooks do show some signs of weakness in this area. Grabbing the notebook by the palmrest and carrying it around didn’t cause any twisting or creaking noises. With the notebook closed the screen cover gave above average protection for the screen and should prevent any keyboard key marks on from imprinting on the LCD after being transported in a backpack loaded with other items. With the notebook open it took a good amount of pressure applied to the back of the cover before it showed any ripples or distortions on the display.

Users looking to upgrade parts of IT staff looking to replacing components will find the Latitude E6410 very easy to service. Dell designed the entire bottom around a single access panel with a single screw holding it in place. After removing the screen (which is retained with a spring so it never gets lost) you simply slide the cover down about a smidge and pop it off. With the cover removed you gain access to the WWAN, Wi-Fi card, memory slots, processor and heatsink, CMOS battery, cooling fan, and the instant-on OS card. Outside of having a cover that removes by the thought of wanting to upgrade alone, the E6410 is probably the easiest notebook we have come across to upgrade.

The Latitude E6410 is packed with a ton of connections, including three USB 2.0 ports, an eSATA/USB combo port, VGA and DisplayPort-out, audio jacks, LAN, and FireWire-400. Other features include an optical drive, SDHC-card reader, and a SmartCard reader.Once again, the stereo speakers on the Inspiron 14 class of notebooks failed to impress me. The stereo speakers produce average sound quality and are located beneath the front edge of the notebook palmrests firing downward at your lap. I usually call this type of audio “crotch speakers” because the speakers aren’t pointed up toward the user. If you’re using the Inspiron 14 on a desk then the audio from the speakers “bounces” off the hard desk surface and it sounds okay, but if you’re using this PC as a “laptop” then the sound is going to be muffled.

Bottom line, the speakers aren’t horrible … but the location isn’t helping matters. You’ll probably want to use a good set of headphones with this notebook, and the headphone jack produces clear, distortion-free sound.The glossy LED backlit display on the Mini 9 is nice and vibrant with rich colors and good contrast. The white levels are very clear, leaning towards the slightly warm/orange side. Colors look excellent with the glossy screen, but at the cost of increasing screen reflections and glare. The screen might be bright enough to view outside, but with all the bright reflective surfaces outside, the screen is nearly impossible to view comfortably. Indoors the reflections are not a problem at all.

Horizontal viewing angles are good, so you and a friend won’t have trouble watching a movie on the 8.9-inch screen at the same time. Vertical viewing angles are acceptable, but colors do tend to wash out from above and become inverted when viewed from below.Port selection was better than average for a netbook, with a multi-card reader, three USB ports, Ethernet/LAN, VGA, and audio jacks. There isn’t much to complain about here, although there might have been enough space in the chassis design to support an additional USB port or Firewire. Here is a quick tour of what you get:Build quality is very good considering the entire body is made of plastic. The chassis has some increased flex compared to the E6410, but it isn’t noticeable unless you are really gripping the notebook hard. The plastic screen cover gives some protection to the display, but we found that under some circumstances, tapping or pressing on the cover created LCD distortions. The screen hinges felt solid pivoting the screen forward or back, and one in position kept the screen in place without wobble. The keyboard and palmrest section of the notebook felt sturdy under pressure, with only mild flex noted directly above the optical drive. Overall we were pretty impressed by the build quality of the Latitude E5410.

The touchpad is an ALPS model which is surprisingly good compared to past models we have used on Dell notebooks. Response time times were great with very little lag noticed in our tests. Sensitivity was perfect out of the box, although occasionally tap and drag events caused some selected items not to release. Acceleration speeds on both the X and Y axis were equal, meaning circles drawn on the touchpad were circles on the screen, not ovals. The touchpad included a standard left and right mouse button, while the pointing stick above included three, with the middle one used for scrolling. All of the buttons were long-throw buttons with soft feedback and a quiet press.The Inspiron 11z is a new netbook from Dell, hoping to change the way we think of the ultra-portable segment. Instead of using the long-favored Intel Atom processor, Dell decided to use the new ultra-low voltage Celeron 723 and the GS45 chipset. On paper the processor has more grunt, and when paired with X4500 integrated graphics, it has a huge advantage over Atom machines. In this review we take an in-depth look at the new 11z, to see if it is the netbook we have all been waiting for.

Dell Studio 1555 Battery www.dearbattery.co.uk

For a laptop however, I found the performance to be acceptable and look forward to being able to playing WoW when I am away from my desk.Half-Life 2 was the surprise. It performed very well, with none of the hiccupping I noticed in WoW. I believe this is due to the loading screens, which place all the data into system memory ahead of time. I again ran the game at 1280×800 resolution. I had all settings to their maximum save for antialiasing, which I turned off, and anisotropic filtering, which I set to 4X. I did not notice any slowdowns in the action except in large outdoor areas, but even then the performance was still acceptable, with framerates usually stuck at 60, but sometimes dipping as low as 30.Getting this game to run was a challenge. It has been a while since I have encountered so many issues with a program. After downloading and installing the trial, I was first met with an error saying that a particular DLL file relating to DirectX could not be found. After searching online I found that I needed to download the latest update to DirectX 9 from Microsoft. After doing so, I was met with a new issue.I also tried playing some HD video. I downloaded two different HD movie trailers from Apple’s movie trailer website – one for The Bourne Ultimatum and the other for Hairspray. I chose the 720p format for each of these downloads as that is the closest resolution to the 1420’s screen.The quality was flawless as I expected. Playback was smooth, and the graininess I had experienced in the DVD video was nowhere to be found, thanks to the higher resolution HD video offers.Again you’ll note some graininess in the pictures. I have included a screen capture of one of the frames from the Bourne trailer to compare. As you’ll note the screen capture is much higher quality than the photo. Pictures aren’t always worth a thousand words, but it can take a thousand words to explain away a picture.One feature Dell offers as an option on the Inspiron 15R is Intel Wi-Di (Wireless Display) that transmits 720P resolution video through wireless HDMI over a long distance to a receiver box that attaches to your HDTV. This technology is great for enjoying movies without needing to trip over wires draped across a living room. The downside is this technology requires a 2-3 second buffer, making it impossible to use for a second monitor where you need to actively control items on the screen. Browsing the web is very difficult when your mouse cursor is trailing a couple seconds behind. For watching a movie, its not a problem since you start it up and go hands-off.

When I first pulled the D830 out of its protective envelope boy was I impressed. Things have changed since the days of my 500m. I expected the build quality to be good, but it was unexpectedly good. It’s really quite solid. It’s also very pleasant to look at it; I think the rather subdued appearance is much nicer than the flashy white-bumper Inspiron.When I first opened up the machine I found the hinges quite stiff with pretty much no play. The outer shell of the notebook is made of a magnesium alloy though the inner surfaces are still made of plastic. The chassis has no flex whatsoever; I can pick it up by a corner without a problem. Unfortunately though there is a bit of flex in the screen and palmrest, but it is much less than that of older Dell machines. The latch is a bit loose but the travel is very small. The overall build quality might not be on par with that of the Thinkpad series but it is getting close.Like I said before, I’m very fond of the somewhat simplistic Latitude design. Save for the small curves that make up the corners of the machine the lines of the laptop are straight and parallel forming a nearly rectangular solid. I think this gives it a more rugged and balanced appearance than wedge shaped notebooks which seem to be appearing more and more these days. The two tone color scheme also contributes to the smart appearance of a business laptop.

The keyboard looks like a typical Dell keyboard; it’s very similar in appearance to the keyboard on my 500m. I found that the keyboard is generally more pleasant to use; the keys have a slightly greater travel and a greater amount of feedback as well. There isn’t any flex in the keyboard as far as I can tell, though I am not a terribly hard typist. Overall it’s a decent keyboard, good, but nothing special.The touchpad feels the same as the one on my 500m. It’s responsive and easy to use, but again, nothing terribly special. I really like the buttons under the touchpad. Instead of having a short, hard click the D830 has buttons that have a longer, softer click to them which I just find to be rather nice. The same can be said for the power button and media buttons.In high school I did quite a bit of CAD work on my 500m for my school’s robotics team. Autodesk Inventor 8 took more than a minute to load. Inventor 10 took twice that and ran at a crawl once it started. It was rather frustrating. As I would be majoring in engineering in college, I figured I could use a discrete graphics solution which led me to select the NVS 140 GPU as I read that it was optimized for "business" applications such as CAD. I have not done anything GPU intensive since purchasing this machine so I’m not certain about the real world performance of the NVS 140.

The single core AMD Barton processor in my desktop is clocked at 2.3GHz and I have not known it to really struggle with anything I threw at it. Subsequently I did not think I’d need the fastest processor I could get and went with the 2.0 GHz Intel T7300 because it was a nice round number. Recently I needed to do a fair amount of video encoding and I split the task between the D830 and my desktop. I daresay I was somewhat surprised as to how much faster the T7300 was compared to the older AMD processor. Encoding a certain video file was nearly twice as fast on the D830. I guess there’s no doubt that multiple cores are the wave of the future.I’ll come right out and say that I’m not very fond of Vista. I’m even less fond of the fact that Microsoft really isn’t giving me a choice as to what OS I want to use. I bought my D830 with Vista in the event that I would be forced to upgrade in the near future but with the intention of using XP until then. I chose Vista Business because it is supposed to be the Vista equivalent of XP Pro which I have been happily using for a long time.

Vista came preinstalled along with Roxio Creator and Cyberlink, neither of which I need or use.While waiting for my D830 I learned that Dell’s stock drivers for the NVS 140 were rather poor. Indeed, there was a noticeable amount of lag every couple seconds when opening and closing tabs or moving windows around. It was recommended that I should use Nvidia’s Forceware drivers in place of the stock drivers, so I looked around for a compatible version. Revision 160.05 did not officially supporting the NVS 140, but it definitely improved my system’s graphical performance. It was not free of problems though; I noticed that standby stopped working properly after the driver update and I’m sure there were bugs that I did not notice.Afterwards Vista ran quite smoothly. A cold boot took just under a minute.When the laptop is idling it is also quite cool. The lower half of the keyboard and palmrest stays at room temperature while the upper half just gets a tad bit warmer. Under a heavy load the upper half will heat up a noticeable amount, but the fan does a good job of keeping the temps at a reasonable level. The bottom of the laptop and the air coming out the back can also get pretty warm under these conditions.

I did a simple test to emulate light use of the D830 under battery power. I turned the screen down to half brightness and let windows media player play music at a relatively low volume. This test was also done under the default Vista setup, prior to the installation of ForceWare drivers.The 9-cell primary on its own reached 10% in a bit under three hours. Together with the media bay battery it reached 10% in just over four and a half hours.Considering that my 500m could do three and a half hours on its one primary battery, I was a bit disappointed with the battery life at first, especially when owners of D620s and D630s were claiming battery lives of up to five hours. But considering I have a 15 inch WUXGA screen and discrete graphics I guess a drop in battery life is expected.In the days after I placed my order I spent much time questioning whether or not I had made the right choice. I anxiously awaited the arrival of my new piece of hardware, checking my order status religiously and wondering when it would ship. When it finally arrived I was not disappointed. I’ve been using it for two weeks now with very few problems.

I think the Latitude D830 is an excellent machine. Those who believe Dell only makes cheap, low end computers haven’t seen one of their newer Latitude notebooks. Though its stats might not be as good as those of an XPS M1710 and its case may not be as good as that of a Thinkpad, the D830 is a high quality system with a high quality build and by all means a high quality notebook.The Inspiron 1420 is an excellent all-around platform for the home user all the way through to what I would call the mobile power user. It offers a huge variety of options that allow you to customize the system to suit your needs.Aside from being a bit on the hefty side with the optional 9-cell battery, there is very little not to like about the 1420. With a fast Core 2 Duo processor and a discrete graphics card courtesy of nVidia, it even has the ability to do occasional gaming, which is a very valuable talent to me and I’m sure it is so for many other professionals out there, young and old alike.

Hopefully this review has given you a good idea of what to expect and what not to expect when you receive your Inspiron 1420 from Dell. I have learned a great deal about my system in writing it and I hope you’ve learned more about yours as well.And as there has been much discussion about the black lid being of a slightly different texture than the other colored lids, and its predilection to picking up fingerprints, I thought I would mention that the black lid does indeed easily pick up the oils from my skin.The newly designed Inspiron 15R is the latest 15.6-inch desktop-replacement notebook from Dell. Equipped with the Intel Core i3 or i5 processors and Intel GMA HD graphics, this budget-friendly system is aimed at the masses. In this review we take an in-depth look at this new system and see how it performs.

The computer shipped with everything shown here. The container was divided into two sections, a cardboard container for the power supply, media bay battery, resource disks and documentation and a styrofoam crate for the actual computer. I was actually somewhat surprised that the notebook came with printed documentation; the last few Dell machines my family bought came with a short pamphlet telling you how to plug in the computer in several different languages.I don’t use a pointing stick very often; in fact there isn’t one on my 500m, but I found it to be less responsive than the touchpad and harder to use. I tended to overshoot where I was aiming much of the time. It may just be because I don’t have much experience with the trackpoint. The buttons for the trackpoint are the same as those for the touchpad with that same long, soft click.

I don’t like having a bunch of multimedia buttons cluttering up the front of my computer, so I am glad that the D830 only has three. There are three buttons to control the speaker volume: higher, lower and mute.According to the various reviews I read, the D820 seemed to have a rather lacking screen and I was afraid this problem would carry over to the D830. Initially I felt that my fears had come true, but after further consideration and comparison, I find that the screen is quite nice, though it’s certainly not perfect.I’ve heard numerous comments about the screen being "washed out" and colors being "faded", but unless I’m running on batteries and thus, less than full brightness, I don’t find any of these to be problems, Even without any sort of brightness or contrast tweaks the screen is quite useable and ultimately the high amounts of light leakage don’t seem to affect the performance of the display.

One of the reasons I turned down the D630 was a that speaker quality was reported to be pretty bad. I usually use headphones when listening to movies or music but I’d like to have a decent set of speakers for the rare times I don’t. That being said, the speakers on the D830 are pretty good as far as laptop speakers go. Being set on the sides of the keyboard means they are quite clear when I am sitting at machine and the sound carries itself pretty well even across the length of a living room. The sound does start getting fuzzy at really high volumes, but my ears usually start to ring before it gets to that point.