Labs

Luxury laptops

Every month, we take a lot of time to calculate the scores you see at the bottom of each review. But everyone's needs are different, and this month's range of laptops is so varied it's worth viewing the scores with more perspective than usual.

Pure benchmark performance, for instance, isn't the be all and end all: the Lenovo X300 isn't the quickest laptop, but as a slim business PC it doesn't need to be. Meanwhile, desktop replacements such as the HP Pavilion are often driven with more demanding tasks and tend to be packed with power - so benchmark scores become more important.

Similarly, battery life is more important for some laptops than others. The Fujitsu Siemens Lifebook P8010 lasts for hours, and it should - it's designed to be carried around and used on the move. Battery longevity isn't so vital for a desktop replacement, though, so the poor lifespan of the Dell XPS M1730 isn't so critical.

It's all about priorities. While all the scores are important, different laptops are designed for different uses.

Performance

We still put each machine through our usual gruelling set of benchmarks, though, using real-world applications such as Word, Access and Photoshop (see the Real World Benchmarks PDF in the Editorial section of our cover disc for more). The overall 2D result is relative to a score of 1.00 from our reference PC - a dual-core 3.2GHz Pentium D 840 system with 1GB RAM, a 10,000rpm hard disk and Nvidia GeForce 6600 GT graphics.

Battery Life

For our light-use test, we run a simple timer app until the battery runs out, and for the intensive test we push the processor to its limit with our multitasking benchmark. This gives us a minimum and maximum battery life. In both cases, we use the power-management settings most suited to longevity and performance.

Features & Design

Here we examine the machine's spec, including its interfaces, hard disk and optical drive. We factor in software bundles and warranty, as well as each company's performance in our Reliability & Service Awards (see issue 160). The rating includes subjective points for items that can't be measured objectively, such as the build quality.

Value for Money

The Value for Money score is based on a weighted average of every score; we then factor in exactly how much each machine costs (including delivery).

Overall

The Overall rating is a straight average of the Performance, Battery Life, Features & Design and Value for Money scores.