Review: Grading The Notebooks

Unlike cell phones, which are getting smarter and bigger, personal computers are getting smaller and lighter. Workstations and desktops are moving toward a sleeker and more compact look. Laptops, already portable, are not immune to this trend, as they shrink to thin and light, portables and ultra-portables.

The size of a hardcover book, ultra-portables are light, easy to carry and have decent battery performance—attributes that are important to someone on the go. For everyday use, an ultra-portable can feel too cramped with its small keyboard and screen. Its size makes the notebook feel deceptively fragile, as if it would be too easy to break. Designed for travel, it tolerates jostling, bumps and tossing that occur inside the bag pretty well. The svelte units come with basic functionality that fit most business requirements.

CRN Test Center engineers examined ultra-portables—defined as notebooks weighing less than four pounds that are 1.5-inches thick or less when closed, and have screens measuring 12 inches or less diagonally— from four different vendors. The units include Fujitsu's Lifebook P7230, Lenovo's ThinkPad X61, Panasonic's Toughbook W5 and Sony's Vaio VGN-TZ150N/B. Convertibles were not included for consideration.

Each vendor was asked to send products with the basic configuration available to the market. Each submission came with Intel Core 2 Duo processors, Intel integrated graphics and wireless networking capabilities. They all came with a basic battery, not an extended one.

While the ultra-portables were similar to each other, there were still some major differences. The notebooks had an internal optical drive, with the exception of the X61 from Lenovo. The Fujitsu and Sony notebooks came with 1 Gbyte of memory, Lenovo with 2 Gbytes and Panasonic with 1.5 Gbytes. The ThinkPad, Lifebook and Vaio shipped with Microsoft Vista Business, but the Toughbook shipped with Windows XP. Panasonic said the company still ships XP with the Toughbooks due to customer demand. Because the Toughbook models are Vista-capable (recommended for Vista Business) and XP is part of its basic configuration, engineers decided to include the model in this review.

To balance out the variation in memory and operating systems, engineers evaluated the ultra-portables against a 37-item checklist, including ease of use, available expansion ports, accessories, weight and size, battery life and appearance. PassMark's PerformanceTest software was used to benchmark the notebooks. Value was calculated as cost-per-point. The checklist was used to populate the scorecard: features, quality/reliability, price/performance, ease of use, portability and profit potential. After calculating the technical merits of each unit, engineers then evaluated each vendor's partner program to find the best pick for the channel.

Next: Lenovo ThinkPad X61