$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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rqle - Tuesday, November 29, 2005 - link
Hmm, didnt know these littler celeron M 1.4ghz can pretty much outpace the new architecture of the sempron 2800+ cpu. interesting.Questar - Tuesday, November 29, 2005 - link
How about an Inspiron 6000? I snagged one for $584 + $19 shipping.Questar - Tuesday, November 29, 2005 - link
BTW, that was with a P-M, not a C-M.bjacobson - Tuesday, November 29, 2005 - link
niceQuestar - Tuesday, November 29, 2005 - link
Yeah, and now I see you can get a 600m for less than $600.Alphafox78 - Tuesday, November 29, 2005 - link
I have a V2000Z with a Turion64 and its great!!! It sounds like the article is biased against compaq or something, the thing is sweet. works great in World of Warcraft and even plays BF2, althouh its not too fun. the form factor is great, I highly recommend it. mine does have the brightview screen, 1GB of PC3200 ram and a 5400rpm drive tho.. ;)SS - Tuesday, November 29, 2005 - link
The point of this was for $600 range laptops, going with the Turion64 setup over the Sempron and upgrading the RAM and hard drive all would push the price well over the price point this review was for.So you are basically asking to rate the $600 laptop based off the $1400 model's preformance.
Alphafox78 - Tuesday, November 29, 2005 - link
I got mine for $760 after tax. then the free buestbuy ram, used the HD from my old laptop. lower than $700 after the free ram and stuff. I didnt get it for $500, missed that offer by a week! arg!Hacp - Tuesday, November 29, 2005 - link
Tell that to the people who got the Turion 64 V2000Zs with wireless/12cell for around 500 shipped taxed. Then add the free 1GB bestbuy ram.Hacp - Tuesday, November 29, 2005 - link
Ya if you can get it for under 450 taxed shipped of course its great :).Also to further my comments, I think this article really shows the strenght of the Intel centrino platform. In other tests with dedicated graphics cards, the Turion/sempron/ and Pentium M come really close in terms of battery life, but in this test, comparing the V2000 to the V2000Z, we see that the whole platform makes the celeron have much battery life, even though the sempron "should" have more Blife.