3. Setup

The M2N is a classic dual-spindle box (hard drive and optical drive are built into the machine). Our test laptop differed from the standard European models in that it was equipped with the 1.6 GHz version of the Pentium M (Banias). Asus installed a fast, 5400-rpm Travelstar 40GNX hard drive in the machine. One thing the M2N doesn't lack is ports, although a few business users might lament the lack of a Bluetooth module.

The system has an integrated graphics solution (828582/ 82855 GM/ GME) without any dedicated video RAM. These kinds of solutions are often called UMA graphics solutions (unified memory architecture) because part of the system memory is earmarked as video RAM. However, this isn't a standard UMA solution where you can pre-define the size of your video memory in BIOS; the M2N's Intel chipset uses Dynamic Video Memory Technology (DVMT). DVMT is basically an expanded UMA in which the graphics driver responds to system and application demands for video RAM, modifying video memory to meet current requirements dynamically and automatically. The goal is to balance graphics performance and system requirements as evenly as possible. The maximum size of your video memory depends on the total size of your system memory. For a system RAM of 255 MB and less, you can allocate up to 32 MB to video; starting at 256 MB, you can increase this allotment to as much as 64 MB.

Wherever it seemed necessary, we compared the readings for the Asus M2N with those for the Lifebook S6120 (its configuration is included in the table).