7. Testing: Benchmarks And Methods

We ran several benchmarking tests for the second part of this article. These include BAPCo's MobileMark 2005 battery life tests, 3DMark 05 and a number of gaming performance benchmarks.

MobileMark 2005 uses real world office applications to measure battery life under different conditions. It also provides a measure of the performance of the combined components in a mobile computer that is running on battery power.

For more on how we use the BAPCo benchmarks see How We Test Laptop and Notebook Computers for Home and Office.

Unless otherwise noted, all of the battery-based tests discussed here were done with Microsoft's preliminary USB 2.0 battery drain patch for Windows XP SP2 installed. For more on the patch that applies to all computers running Win XP SP2 see these articles:

3DMark05 measures gaming graphics performance on a computer that is plugged into an AC socket. A computer must obtain a 3DMark05 overall score of over 500 before we report its performance in a chart. Scores below 500 are noted in the body of an article.

Gaming performance benchmarks measure the ability of a graphics processor to render moving three dimensional images. Our tests included Doom 3, HalfLife 2, Black & White 2 and F.E.A.R.