What we tested
Apple Powerbook G4 800
The Apple Titanium PowerBook G4 has had some major upgrades since the last time we looked at it. It sports the faster G4 processor, and the ATI Mobility Radeon 7500 graphics accelerator with 32MB of video RAM, as well as some extra ports. The PowerBook is powered by a Power Mac G4 800MHz processor, which has 1MB of Level 3 cache. It ships with 256MB of RAM, which can be expanded up to 1GB.
The PowerBook is only 2.6cm thick and only weighs 2.5kg. This is quite remarkable considering it has a 15.2in display. This display is absolutely stunning and has superb picture quality. The PowerBook’s grey-silver design looks very reserved, but modern and stylish at the same time. The keypad is made up of transparent black keys, which offer excellent feedback, and the huge palmrest area makes it comfortable to use.
The PowerBook also features a 40GB IBM hard disk, and a one-inch thick slot-loading DVD drive. Like the iBook, the PowerBook ditches legacy ports in favour of USB. The back of this notebook features a DVI port for plugging into an external LCD, as well as a FireWire and video out. The PowerBook also has a built in AirPort (Apple’s name for 802.11b wireless) antenna cable, which attaches to the end of the optional AirPort Card.
It was no surprise the PowerBook outperformed the iBook and the Toshiba in PSBench. Apples have always been known to perform well in graphics applications. However, being only one test, we can’t assume it’s faster overall. For the first time we tested the battery performance of a Mac, using a Windows 98 emulator to run BMark. Even though the Apple did quite well, it would have been working rather hard, running its own OS, Windows under emulation, and the benchmark.
Sony Vaio PCGR505BP
Unlike the other notebooks we looked at, the Sony VAIO comes with a docking station, which adds a DVD/CD-RW drive, a floppy drive, and a host of I/O connectors including a FireWire port. Together with the docking station the Sony VAIO weighs in at 3.1kg. On its own, it only weighs 1.9kg making it the lightest notebook in this review.
It may be light, but it’s also strong and robust. The display panel is not at all flimsy and we didn’t notice any rippling on the screen when we applied pressure to the back. The display quality is excellent, but the screen is a little small at 12.1in.
The palm rest and keyboard are very stable. The VAIO uses a glidepad and also features a jog shuttle, which conveniently allows you to scroll without moving the pointer. The VAIO was unfortunately the slowest notebook we tested, and we don’t think it would make a good desktop replacement. It’s a little underpowered in the processor department, with a 1.13GHz Pentium III processor, but the graphics is more of a worry. It uses Intel’s 830MG chipset, which in our opinion doesn’t offer much in the way of graphics performance, and uses the main system memory instead of having any dedicated video RAM.
The VAIO is very innovative, and combined with the docking station offers the flexibility that many of the other notebooks can’t. However it’s too underpowered to be considered a serious desktop replacement.
Toshiba Satellite Pro 6100
The Toshiba Satellite features a mobile Pentium 4 processor along with 256MB of RAM, a 40GB hard disk, and a DVD-ROM drive. It features an all-black colour scheme, and even the keypad is black. It is the only notebook we looked at not to have a glidepad, instead opting for a trackball. There was very little bounce in the keyboard and the layout was quite good.
The Toshiba Satellite has a Secure Digital slot, which can easily transfer data from devices such as digital cameras and PDAs that use SD memory. The Satellite Pro also has a Slim Select bay, which enables you to take out the DVD/CD-RW drive and replace it with a second hard disk or battery to suit your needs. The Toshiba uses a 32MB nVidia GeForce4 420 Go graphics accelerator. This proved to be a very fast 2D and 3D graphics accelerator. Along with its excellent disk scores, the Toshiba posted the fastest scores in Content Creation Winstone and Business Winstone.
In 3Dmark the Toshiba was beaten by the two clone notebooks, which were equipped with more video memory. The Toshiba also performed really well in our disk tests, thanks to its 5400RPM hard drive.
Xenon Metro Mobile Pro M40
Pioneer P4 Power Notebook We decided to review these two notebooks together, since they are both rebadged Clevo notebooks, and are almost identical. The shells on these notebooks are slightly different, but the insides are practically the same. The Xenon uses a mobile Pentium 4 processor, which runs at 1.6GHz, while the Pioneer features a 2.2GHz desktop Pentium 4 CPU.
These two notebooks are the heaviest, not only because they both have a large footprint, but also because they both have an enormous heatsink and two large fans and one small fan to keep the CPU cool. In the case of the Pioneer this makes sense, because it uses the desktop version of the Pentium 4, which requires extra cooling, but we can’t understand why Xenon chose this configuration. These two notebooks are the heaviest, not only because they both have a large footprint, but also because they both have an enormous heatsink and two large fans and one small fan to keep the CPU cool.
In the case of the Pioneer this makes sense, because it uses the desktop version of the Pentium 4, which requires extra cooling, but we can’t understand why Xenon chose this configuration. Performance between the two was interesting. The Pioneer was faster than Xenon, but not by much. We had a feeling that the Pioneer notebook may not have been running at its full rated speed in order to conserve power or reduce heat.
Both notebooks have four USB ports, support a native resolution of 1400 x 1050, and have 64MB of video memory on board. They have standalone audio CD players that let you play audio CDs when the notebook is turned off. The notebooks have two drive bays on the right-hand side. One is taken up by the optical drive, while the second can house a second optical drive, second battery, or a floppy drive.
These clones are significantly cheaper than any of the name brands, and offer comparable performance and better flexibility than the name brand notebooks. For instance, none of the name brands can support a second optical drive, though we’re hard pressed to think why you’d need one. On the down side they are very heavy, and not the most aesthetically pleasing
