11. MobileMark 2005 Test Results, Continued

Toshiba's Qosmio G25-AV513 is not comparable to the N15RI on every feature. However, it does have the same CPU and somewhat comparable memory and disk hardware. So, I've included MobileMark 2005 performance rating and average response time scores for both the N15RI and the Qosmio. What fun! The scores are exactly the same for both notebooks. Actually, the performance rating is based on average response times. So it's not at all surprising that both scores are exactly the same.

The test units of the N15RI and the Qosmio I received from Twinhead and Toshiba came with very different batteries. The N15RI with a 73.3 Wh capacity battery; the Qosmio with a 47.5 Wh battery. It would be unfair to compare the two notebooks on battery life. The N15RI would always win. So, because the rest of the MobileMark 2005 tests involve battery life, that's the end of Twinhead-Toshiba comparisons at least for MobileMark.

Looking at the third MobileMark 2005 chart, you can see that the N15RI ran the Office Productivity benchmark for 4 hours and 43 minutes before its battery ran out of juice. I want to dwell on the Productivity benchmarks for a bit. I tried running the tests under different power schemes. I got the results presented above using the Max Battery power scheme (Start > Settings > Control Panel > Power Options > Max Battery). Using the Desktop/Laptop setting the Performance Rating score was a much better 273 with an average response time of .95.

I can hear you saying "Yea, but I'll bet your battery was gone in no time." Nope. The battery lasted for just 10 minutes less, 4 hours and 33 minutes. So I traded 39% better performance for 10 minutes of battery life. The Desktop/Laptop test ran faster because the CPU was allowed to run at full speed (2 GHz) most of the time. At Max Battery, the CPU sat at 800 MHz most of the time. Mobile computer displays, not CPUs are the big battery hogs.

I urge you to experiment with power scheme settings on your mobile computer. However, because not all laptops and notebooks do power management exactly the same way, your mileage may vary.

The N15RI did well on the other MobileMark 2005 battery life tests. The battery lasted 4 hours and 35 minutes in the wireless browsing test; 4 hours and 10 minutes while playing the MobileMark 2005 test DVD and 4 hours and 50 minutes in the least demanding MobileMark 2005 test, reading from file on its disk using a Web browser. All in all the Twinhead RI5RI is a solid performer in the area of Office Applications.