8. Performance: Office Applications, Multimedia And Graphics

To assess a laptop or notebook computer's battery life and performance, MobilityGuru uses benchmarks from BAPCo's MobileMark 2005 suite of tests, specifically the Office Productivity and Wireless Web Browsing benchmarks. For more on how we use the MobileMark 2005 benchmarks see this article How We Test Laptop and Notebook Computers for Home and Office.

After considerable evaluation, MobilityGuru's panel of testing experts has concluded that the other MobileMark 2005 tests add little to our knowledge about battery life, especially when we compare one portable computer with another.

We have also concluded that BAPCo's SYSmark 2004 SE benchmarks add little to our sense of a computer's performance. While absolute scores may differ for a given computer between the MobileMark and SYSmark tests, different computers tend to rank very much the same in performance whether the MobileMark or SYSmark tests are used. So, we will not be using the SYSmark 2004 SE benchmarks from this point forward.

We are developing new multimedia tests focusing on both battery life when playing a DVD and performance when playing a high definition video image. Also in the works are a set of graphics benchmarks for mobile computers. These will include tests that seasoned members of TG Publishing's audience will recognize and, we hope, love. We'll also be bringing you some new tests. However, for this assessment of the Fujitsu N6410 the only graphics benchmarking tool I used was FutureMark's 3DMark 2005. It will remain part of the graphics testing benchmarks for all of TG Publishing's websites.

Just for fun I tried playing a couple of games on the N6410. Though these "tests" are totally subjective, the reveal some interesting results.

For the Fujitsu 6410 all of the battery-based tests discussed in this section were done under Windows XP Pro SP2, with the battery drain patch and without the TV tuner/video capture device or its driver.