11. Benchmarks

We use three test suites to determine the battery life as well as the performance of the individual computers: BAPCo MobileMark, SYSmark 2004 SE and FutureMark PCMark05.

Battery Life: MobileMark 2005

The MobileMark 2005 benchmark tests the behavior of a mobile computer running on battery. There are four battery rundown tests: office productivity, searching and reading, DVD playback, and wireless web browsing. Each test uses real applications, begins with a fully charged battery as soon as the power cable is removed from the system, and ends when the battery is completely drained. The results are written to a log file. Additionally, MobileMark 2005 also determines two performance scores. The first is an overall performance score, while the second rates the response time for completing all of the tasks in the office productivity test. The overall performance score is based on the average response time and is correlated to the performance of a reference system with average configuration, which receives 100 points.

The following diagrams show the results of the MobileMark 2005 tests for the Averatec AV1050, the Fujitsu Lifebook B6110D, Toshiba's Portegé R200, and Sony's VAIO VGN-T350P. You can find the conclusions we have drawn from these results below the diagrams.

MobileMark 2005 Battery Life Results And Performance Measurements - Result Analysis

The AV1050 comes in last in the office productivity performance test. This is hardly surprising, since the laptop uses a Pentium M 733 ULV with a maximum frequency of 1.1 GHz. Right from the start, this puts the AV1050 at a ten percent clock speed disadvantage compared to its competitors. Meanwhile, the performance "differences" MobileMark 2005 found between the remaining three devices from Sony, Fujitsu and Toshiba are more of an academic nature, as they are so small as not to be noticeable in the real world.

Where battery life is concerned, Averatec need not fear a direct comparison with its competitors here. Four to five hours of operation is a respectable result for this kind of device and is unusually close to the manufacturer's claims found in the product brochure. Still, like the Fujitsu and Toshiba models, it can't hold a candle to the phenomenal battery life of the Sony.