11. Benchmarks And Settings

For comparison, we have included in our listing of performance measurements the test results for the three devices from the previous widescreen notebook comparative test, HP's widescreen long-life Compaq nc8230, plus both the notebooks used in the DIY notebook project. The latter pair should show for which programs the performance level of mobile PCs with integrated graphics would be completely sufficient. Both devices, the Uniwill223II00 and Dell Latitude D610, are based on Intel chipsets with integrated graphics: the AGP chipset 855GME or the PCIe-successor 915GM.

Besides these pure performance benchmarks, we have of course also measured the charge and discharge times of the batteries under operating conditions. The battery measurements were carried out using three different scenarios. The battery is first fully charged, then an Office program was run, then a game, and for the last measurement a DVD video played, in an endless loop until the battery is empty.

Highly Relevant To Reality: Charging Time For Batteries Under Operating Conditions

For a mobile PC you want to know not only how long the battery charge can hold up under the three program scenarios, but also, how quickly the battery can be recharged once depleted. In practice, no one wants to stop using the computer just because the battery is empty. We therefore also measured the charging time under operating conditions during typical Office programs running in an endless loop or, the other extreme case, a 3D shoot'em up which is run until the battery is completely recharged. The results of this second test provide a neat way of seeing whether the power supply unit has been designed with too little power, or whether under maximum system strain it is even able to deliver enough power to charge the batteries at all.

In order to compare the results for the notebooks with each other, we set the screen brightness on all devices to a constant value of about 100 cd/m².