$600 Notebook Roundup - Crowning the Affordability King
by Anand Lal Shimpi on November 29, 2005 10:38 AM EST- Posted in
- Laptops
Business Performance
Business Winstone 2004
Business Winstone 2004 tests the following applications in various usage scenarios:
The Gateway is in 2nd place, closely followed by Compaq's offerings. It is interesting to note that there is very little performance difference between AMD's Sempron and Intel's Celeron M here.
Office Productivity SYSMark 2004
SYSMark's Office Productivity suite consists of three tests, the first of which is the Communication test. The Communication test consists of the following:
Business Winstone 2004
Business Winstone 2004 tests the following applications in various usage scenarios:
. Microsoft Access 2002
. Microsoft Excel 2002
. Microsoft FrontPage 2002
. Microsoft Outlook 2002
. Microsoft PowerPoint 2002
. Microsoft Project 2002
. Microsoft Word 2002
. Norton AntiVirus Professional Edition 2003
. WinZip 8.1
The Gateway is in 2nd place, closely followed by Compaq's offerings. It is interesting to note that there is very little performance difference between AMD's Sempron and Intel's Celeron M here.
Office Productivity SYSMark 2004
SYSMark's Office Productivity suite consists of three tests, the first of which is the Communication test. The Communication test consists of the following:
"The user receives an email in Outlook 2002 that contains a collection of documents in a zip file. The user reviews his email and updates his calendar while VirusScan 7.0 scans the system. The corporate web site is viewed in Internet Explorer 6.0. Finally, Internet Explorer is used to look at samples of the web pages and documents created during the scenario."The next test is Document Creation performance:
"The user edits the document using Word 2002. He transcribes an audio file into a document using Dragon NaturallySpeaking 6. Once the document has all the necessary pieces in place, the user changes it into a portable format for easy and secure distribution using Acrobat 5.0.5. The user creates a marketing presentation in PowerPoint 2002 and adds elements to a slide show template."The final test in our Office Productivity suite is Data Analysis, which BAPCo describes as:
"The user opens a database using Access 2002 and runs some queries. A collection of documents are archived using WinZip 8.1. The queries' results are imported into a spreadsheet using Excel 2002 and are used to generate graphical charts."The overall Office Productivity score in the three aforementioned tests is compared below:
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
50 Comments
View All Comments
johnsonx - Tuesday, November 29, 2005 - link
Inspiron 6000 (can be had for $600 on the right day)Acer Aspire 3003
Rudimentary gaming benchmarks. Yes, most current games are almost unplayable on these, but some would probably play fine. I played Dungeon Siege LOA quite happily on my Inspiron 6000, and old Unreal Tournament works great (even UT2k4 is just barely playable at 640x480x16, though very ugly). It would also be nice to see how much better ATI integrated gfx are vs. Intel (and SiS Mirage 2 in the case of the Acer).
hondaman - Tuesday, November 29, 2005 - link
I agree that its long overdue for a laptop graphics gaming review. Using all the common graphics, integrated or not, like the mirage 2, x200m, 700m, 9700, and all the assorted nvidia ones.johnsonx - Tuesday, November 29, 2005 - link
"with the Dell doing absolutely dismally at only 144 minutes. The only tangible advantage we can see that Gateway has in this case is that they use an older chipset"...The tangible disadvantage for the Dell is that they use the old NiMH battery instead of Lithium ion. I have the original version of that laptop, the Inspiron 1000. It's battery life sucked even worse, plus it died after only 5 months.
If you even remotely care about battery life, DON'T buy a dell with the NiMH battery. Don't buy a Dell without a 1-year warranty either.
ksherman - Tuesday, November 29, 2005 - link
Is there any hope for upgrades in these laptops? Like if I poped the hood off the COmpaq (Smepron of course) and threw in a Turion MT processor... or even a pentium M for the others, is that something doable?Hacp - Tuesday, November 29, 2005 - link
I know for a fact that the compaqs are upgradable. you can upgrade the processor/ram/hd/optical drive.bloc - Tuesday, November 29, 2005 - link
http://www.shopping.hp.com/webapp/shopping/compute...">http://www.shopping.hp.com/webapp/shopp...el=2&...IT's TFT XGA, not WXGA.
SilverTrine - Tuesday, November 29, 2005 - link
I'm amazed that Gateway tries to charge $50 shipping on a notebook. Anands assertion of $600 laptops is misleading, with shipping and tax this laptop is $800.KCjeeper - Tuesday, November 29, 2005 - link
I purchased one of these Gateway laptops a few weeks ago and am very pleased with it. Mine came with the wireless G and I only paid $579.bldckstark - Tuesday, November 29, 2005 - link
I am curious as to which company(ies) denied access to test parts. It doesn't make a whole lot of difference, but I wonder who is so embarassed of their product that they don't want them compared openly.bjacobson - Tuesday, November 29, 2005 - link
Something worth noting is that the good battery life on the V2000 is thanks to the Intel 2200BG integrated wireless, not the Broadcom wireless. The Broadcom is what made the V2000z Sempron's do so poorly.