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Laptops have always had a certain cachet about them. The ability to bring your PC with you when you travel is something to be envied, but generally it has come at a price. Sure, there was a financial premium to pay for portability, but there was also a
trade-off to be made in terms of performance and functionality.

Simply put, laptops weren’t as powerful as their desktop brethren.
Although there is relatively little research done on consumer laptop purchasing patterns in the Irish market, sales of notebooks to home users are going through the roof. According to figures from IDC for the second quarter of this year, notebook sales rose by 34.2 per cent compared with the same period last year. Clearly consumers are happy to make some compromises for the sake of having wireless Internet anywhere in the house, being able to bring their digital photos or MP3s round to friends and family, and all the other advantages that a laptop offers over a desktop.

But does it always have to be a compromise — is it possible to have a notebook that can do it all and still give you the benefits of mobility. Step forward the latest batch of desktop replacements — laptops with as much grunt, if not more, than your average deskbound PC. The term ‘desktop replacement’ has been bandied about by the PC industry for a number of years but it’s only recently that notebooks have begun to equal, and in some cases surpass, the capabilities of desktops. Fast processors, large hard drives, top-notch graphics cards, wireless networking, improved battery life and
widescreens are just some of the features that are becoming standard on desktop replacements.

To see just how practical it is to replace your home PC with something portable, we asked a range of manufacturers to submit a desktop replacement for review. The only guidance we gave was that the machines should be capable of providing all the functionality of a standard desktop PC. The six Windows machines and one Apple iBook we received all featured at least 15in screens, CD or DVD burners, top of the line processors and in most cases 20Gbyte or larger hard drives.

The machines in the line up were Fujitsu Siemens’ Amilo Pro V2000, HP’s Compaq NX7010, Panasonic’s Toughbook CF-51, Prestigio’s Nobile 157, Toshiba’s Satellite M30, Sony’s VAIO PCGK215S and Apple’s iBook G4. Fujitsu Siemens positions the Amilo Pro as a budget-friendly option for small and medium-sized businesses and if truth be told, this machine will probably appeal more to the user who wants to combine work and leisure on a single machine. Given the
price and the configuration of this machine it would have been shooting it out for the honour of Best Buy, but it doesn’t strictly fall into the desktop replacement category.

If you travel on a semi-regular basis and want a machine that can handle work and play, it’s well worth a look. HP may have subsumed Compaq a couple of years ago but the name lives on in its line of notebooks — after all, why bury a brand that invented the laptop? The Compaq NX7010 lives up to the pedigree and with its widescreen and pre-loaded HP applications for digital media it was neck and neck in the final shake-up for Best Buy. Surprisingly, when we checked the HP website it listed this beauty as a business machine but given the spec it would have no problem doubling up as a home PC. In fact, unless you’re senior management it would be hard to see how you would convince your company bean counters to sign off its purchase.

Panasonic’s Toughbook CF-51 is something of an anomaly. As the name suggests, it’s been designed to put up with the rough and tumble of life in the field. Panasonic puts these machines through a range of military tests such as repeated freezing, heating, and dropping to ensure they can withstand anything you are likely to throw at them. Our only question — if it’s going to spend life on the desktop why does it need to be so rugged?

Prestigio may be a brand that’s new to the Irish market but it is one of the biggest brands in the Central and Eastern European markets. As well as notebooks, it makes LCD and plasma TVs and displays, and is probably a marque we are going to hear a lot more about in the future. It submitted one of the lightest smallest machines in the
lineup, yet it didn’t skimp in any way on the specification.

Toshiba’s Satellite M30 was everything you would expect from a company that has long had a reputation for producing cutting-edge laptops that are as reliable as they are good looking. A victim of its own success, it’s often been perceived as a high-end brand only and models like this are part of its push into the budget market. With a
price tag of €1,799, that might seem like a contradiction, but when you consider it was one of the most powerful machines, came in a relatively slim package and wasn’t the highest price, you’ll understand why it was in the shake-up right until the end.

Sony has always pushed the boundaries of thin and light with its Vaio range of notebooks but the PCGK215S doesn’t fit into that category. Sony took us very literally when we said a desktop replacement — this baby firmly falls into the category of luggable rather than truly portable. But when you see the configuration
you get, it’s no surprise that it’s one of the biggest and heaviest models we looked at — after all it’s packing a lot of technology in.

When you open the box containing an Apple iBook G4 you are greeted by a large piece of white card with the phrase ‘Designed by Apple in California’ and once you get the machine out of the box you remember why people get so attached to their Macs. Even before you open it up the sleek white box is a design statement. Apple
critics in the past always got some mileage out of the fact that the rest of the world was running Windows but with the PC experience now such an Internet-centric one, that’s much less of an issue.

We set-up each laptop and put it through its paces by running a set of standard tasks that a typical PC user is likely to do: Ripping and listening to some MP3 music, watching a DVD (the original The Italian Job, since you asked), loading and playing a recent game (UEFA Euro 2004, which we obviously couldn’t run on the iBook),
surfing the Web, and opening and editing some documents on whatever word processing software came pre-loaded on the machine.

Of the Windows machines we looked at, all but one ran on a Pentium-M chip. It is Intel’s customised mobile chip that forms part of its Centrino technology set. The Pentium-M is more energy-efficient than the desktop versions, which means it produces less heat. In turn, that allows lighter and thinner notebooks because less heat sinks and fans are required. That energy efficiency also allows for longer battery life — four to six hours between charges is possible with the latest models.

And just to make things confusing, clock speeds are not directly comparable between Pentium-M and Pentium 4 chips, eg a 1.6GHz Pentium-M outperforms a 2GHz Pentium 4 processor, with some testers even suggesting it is comparable to a 2.4GHz Pentium 4. Confused? Is it any wonder Intel has dropped clock speeds from its
naming conventions for new chips.

Obviously the iBook ran on Apple’s G4 chip, which once again means clock speeds can’t be directly compared. Suffice it to say that in all the tests we ran, the iBook had more than enough power to handle the tasks we threw at it, even though the chip is only clocked at 1.2GHz. The Sony was the only machine to use a standard desktop
chip — a Pentium 4 2.8GHz. The downside of that is the top battery life for the Vaio is only about two hours — proving that if you want a true desktop replacement it’s likely to be used moving around the house or office where you’re never too far from a power socket, rather than out on the road. It also meant that the Vaio was the thickest machine on our review at 55mm — it needs to be in order to accommodate the cooling vents required to keep that P4 chip at an operational temperature.

When it came to our word processing tests, the main aim was to see what the keyboard and trackpad felt like during extended use. Cramped keyboards have traditionally been a weak sport of notebooks and archane mouse-replacements have taken some getting used to. The Amilo Pro had good key action on a flat but roomy keyboard and the trackpad responded well. A joypad in the middle of the two trackpad also allowed for scrolling through documents although it took a little getting used to. In fact the Toughbook probably was the most comfortable keyboard to use — most closely mimicking a desktop keyboard. The hinged trackpad buttons on the Prestigio took some getting used to, as you have to hit them exactly in the right place. Surprisingly given that it’s
a widescreen, the Toshiba keyboard seemed a little cramped — I kept hitting the Shift key unintentionally.

The software bundle seems to have gone the way of the dodo with most manufacturers, although there were some notable exceptions. The Sony machine was pre-loaded with a smorgasboard of software like Click To DVD, Microsoft Works 7, Adobe Photoshop Elements 2.0, Norton Internet Security 2004 and the Google Toolbar to name but a few. To buy all the software yourself would normally cost several hundred— and with it all pre-loaded on the Vaio you don’t have to worry about being legitimate. A nod also to the iBook and Prestigio — the only two machines to include a version of Microsoft Office.

All of the machines are designed to fit into a lifestyle that is centred around digital media. At the very least each of these machines will enable you to burn your own multimedia creations onto a CD ROM. The Sony and Toshiba models go a step further and provide a DVD ROM and the necessary authoring software to start creating your own DVDs. And while on the subject of DVDs, why do manufacturers include DVD ROM drives but then not offer a DVD encoder so that you can watch movies? Fujitsu-Siemens and Panasonic both fell into this category.

Four of the seven models submitted were widescreen. That’s a great advantage for viewing movies and each of these models — the HP, Toshiba, Sony and Apple — could be considered as an extra TV for a room in the house. The extra screen real estate also enhances working with spreadsheets and other applications where you want the largest viewable area possible.

Aware that most PC buyers now want their PC to interact with digital cameras, MP3 players and other devices that use removable digital media, all the Windows machines offer a card reader. Most favour the SD standard, although not surprisingly Sony only
supports its own Memory Stick standard – worth bearing in mind if you don’t want to go down the Sony route for your peripherals.
Ask any of the manufacturers and they’ll tell you Intel’s Centrino, with its support for wireless connectivity and longer battery life, has been a huge hit with purchasers. All of these notebooks are based on Centrino, with the exception of Apple which offers wireless capabilities under its own AirPort branding. Interestingly HP also included Bluetooth on the Compaq NX7010 for connection to peripherals such as mobile phones and printers.

So at the end of the day who scooped our Best Buy honour? It was a very tight decision with all of the machines making an argument for inclusion. But in the end if we were in the market ourselves we’d opt for the Toshiba Satellite M30.

Our Best Buy may not be the ideal machine for your needs. We based our decision on a combination of price and performance running our chosen applications. But the applications we ran may not be the ones that you are likely to run on a regular basis.
And we made our choice on whether the machines would be an ideal desktop replacement. In other words, if a compromise was made for portability, it reduced a machine’s scoring.

PC Live! Best Buy
Toshiba Satellite M30

The minute we took this silver dream machine out of the box we were smitten. One of the thinnest and lightest notebooks we received, it wouldn’t strictly be a portable but you certainly wouldn’t strain any muscles moving it around the house or office. The
15.4in widescreen looked great whether playing games or watching DVDs — hardly surprising given it’s powered by a high-end Nvidia graphics card. We also liked the price, which was at the top end of the scale but it buys you a hell of a lot of computing power. The sound out of the Harmon Kardon speakers belied their size — they look tiny but they sound huge. The inclusion of external music controls so you can listen to CDs with the power off is also a nice touch. And the ability to burn DVDs is something we’ll all be looking for next year but the Satellite M30 offers today.