5. Preparing For And Running MobileMark 2005, Continued

Starting a MobileMark 2005 productivity benchmark test.

After setting the parameters in the table, we install MobileMark 2005 and run its system conditioning utility. This completely discharges and recharges the test computer's battery, making it possible for the system to know when the battery is fully depleted. Finally, we run each of the four MobileMark 2005 benchmarks.

A MobileMark 2005 test begins when external power is removed from the laptop or notebook.

The MobileMark 2005 office productivity benchmark is about to end (the black box in the upper right corner shows that battery power is at 2%)

In order to publish our findings, our agreement with BAPCo requires that we submit to the consortium a Full Disclosure Report (FDR) for each computer we test. An FDR includes some of the conditions under which we ran the benchmarks and our test results.

Before we run the MobileMark 2005 benchmarks on a mobile computer we condition the battery. MobileMark itself includes a battery conditioning option that starts with a fully charged battery and fully discharges the battery. This assures that the battery is operating at full capacity. Sometimes manufacturers send us evaluation units with batteries that have been through a lot of charge-discharge cycles. Such batteries generally have difficulty holding a full charge. This puts the test unit at a disadvantage in our tests. We ask manufacturers to ship test computers with a new or nearly new batteries. If the battery they send will not hold a full or nearly full charge, we ask for a new battery.