16. MobileMark 2005 Battery Benchmarks Conclusions

The MobileMark 2005 Office Productivity benchmark would not run under the Windows XP Tablet PC operating system. The test uses Word, PowerPoint and other Microsoft Office applications. It fails when these applications try to load voice recognition support files at the request of Tablet PC. The applications are installed and set up during MobileMark 2005 installation. Voice recognition support files are not included in the installation process. The Office apps cannot be modified after installation without affecting the overall stability of the test suite. After initial failures running the Office Productivity benchmark, I reinstalled Tablet PC and MobileMark 2005 along with a recently released patch for the benchmarking suite. The MobileMark 2005 Office Productivity benchmark failed with the same error.

Results reported in the MobileMark 2005 Office Productivity charts are from earlier tests of the P1510D with XP Pro and basic stylus functionality. I expect that results would have been pretty much the same if the tests were done with Tablet PC installed. Extrapolation of on-screen battery life data visible just before the tests failed after about 40 minutes indicates an expected battery life of around 3 hours and 2 minutes, which is very close to the 3 hours and 4 minutes found in earlier tests. Also, as you'll see in a bit, the Reader and Wireless Web browser benchmarks did run and delivered results fairly close to those from the earlier tests.

Additionally, as both the SYSmark 2004 SE and PCMark05 tests show, at least on AC power, the CPU, memory and disk drives in the Tablet PC version of the P1510D performed about the same as those in the earlier non-Tablet PC version. So, I would expect the updated P1510D to deliver about the same productivity score (165) and average response time (1.47 seconds) as the earlier version of the laptop/tablet.

Both the MobileMark 2005 research and reading and wireless Web browsing benchmarks ran just fine. The former uses only Netscape, the latter only the version of Internet Explorer already installed on the computer. Tablet PC didn't try to force either browser to load additional speech or other supporting software.

The Fujitsu P1510D's 28 Watt Hour standard battery kept the tiny laptop running for 3 hours and 24 minutes in the research and reading test, which is the least battery intensive test in the MobileMark 2005 battery benchmarking suite. That's 14 minutes longer than the three hours and 10 minutes delivered by the battery on the P1510D in our earlier tests. Battery life dipped to 2 hours and 44 minutes in the more hardware intensive wireless Web browsing test. The laptop ran 9 fewer minutes, 2 hours and 35 minutes, in the earlier tests.

Be cautious here before assuming that Tablet PC actually extends battery life. The two rounds of tests were not done using the same battery or the same P1510D hardware. Though it's unlikely the P1510D itself made any difference, the battery used in the tests with Tablet PC might have been newer and/or better cared for before the test unit arrived. I still feel fairly comfortable saying that Tablet PC has no significant affect on battery life when compared with Tablet PC-less Windows XP Pro.

With its high capacity 56 Watt Hour battery in place, the P1510D without Tablet PC ran for six hours and 14 minutes in the Office Productivity test with a productivity score of 169 and average response time of 1.44 seconds. Again, I would expect similar results with the Tablet PC OS in place. I would expect the high capacity battery to run the laptop around twice as long as the standard battery. And here's the clincher: Even with its high capacity battery in place the P1510D still qualifies as an ultra lightweight laptop with a weight just a tad over 2.5 pounds (1134 g). The high capacity battery does add ½" (1.3 cm) to the computer's depth.

The P1510D doesn't have a built-in DVD drive and Fujitsu offers no dedicated external DVD drive. So the MobileMark 2005 DVD benchmark test was not run.