$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:
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OrSin - Tuesday, November 29, 2005 - link
No video benchmarks at all. I'm not saying test BF2, but something would be nice.I think the AMD laptops would show some definate leads in that.
raskren - Tuesday, November 29, 2005 - link
It sounds like you want to see a benchmark where the AMD offerings *might* show an advantage over Intel so you can feel better about *your* company.These are not for gaming. Why should Anand waste his time?
Why don't we do some Geo Metro top speed testing as well?
hondaman - Tuesday, November 29, 2005 - link
Has nothing to do with amd vs intel.Has everything to do with how well laptops do compared to desktops in games.
hondaman - Tuesday, November 29, 2005 - link
I was dissappointed about this too. It was the first thing i looked for when I read this article today on anandtech. I wanted some game benchmarks.Anyone who buys a 600.00 laptop isnt buying it for games, however, I _am_ in the market for a laptop in the 1000.00 range, and I would like to do some casual gaming here and there on it. Severeral of these laptops reviewed share the same video processor as some laptops much more expensive, and good laptop reviews are so hard to come by.
Hacp - Tuesday, November 29, 2005 - link
Bottom line, gaming on integrated graphics is non existant. If you want a gaming laptop, get dedicated graphics.PrinceGaz - Wednesday, November 30, 2005 - link
Gaming does not necessarily mean playing the very latest games, and at the highest graphics quality settings. Some people seem to think all that matters with a game is how pretty the graphics are, and discard it when something that looks better comes along. Gameplay is more important to me, and there are plenty of older games that are just as much fun to play as the current hits.I'm sure all of these $600 laptops with their integrated graphics (especially ATI) would be quite capable of playing the top games of the 2001-2002 era very well, and do a decent job with some later titles as well. The only likely probloem is the 256MB system memory which has to be shared with graphics-- but an upgrade to 512MB is the first thing most people would do to these laptops anyway to make them more flexible.
mikecel79 - Tuesday, November 29, 2005 - link
Why? Who is going to try and game on one of these things?oupei - Tuesday, November 29, 2005 - link
maybe some RTS games or something would have been nice.Hacp - Tuesday, November 29, 2005 - link
Gaming would be horrible. WHo would wnat to play halflife 2 at 800x600 at 24 frames per second?I have a V2000Z and tried playing some games on it. It sucks. About the only "modern" game that I can play is Civ VI.
I'm pretty sure that older games will run fine on it though.
bjacobson - Tuesday, November 29, 2005 - link
Do you have the x300 ATi or the Intel graphics? I'm thinking of getting one of these boards too.