27. Summary And Conclusions

Together, all five of our roundup notebooks still tip the scales at over 40 pounds!

To us, the most interesting thing about this roundup is that the test results don't always tell the whole story. Display results certainly are important. However, given their size and weight, the notebooks in our roundup offer only limited mobility. Battery tests and even PCMark05 performance tests, while interesting and somewhat useful. don't address the notebooks' media handling capabilities as well as we might have liked. We had hoped to include a new set of benchmarks from Intel called the "Digital Home Capabilities Assessment Tool" (DHCAT). However, the tests were not ready in time for this article.

On paper, in fact, the clear winner of this roundup is the HP Pavilion DV8299XX. It posted the best overall results in most categories and offers a nice collection of features and functions at a pretty nice price (at this writing $2,134.99 as configured, including HP's current $50 mail-in rebate). If we were buying a machine ourselves, we'd be inclined to buy this one, because it's equally good at handling normal workaday tasks and multimedia functions.

However, since this is in fact a multimedia notebook review, we need to look at the units from that perspective. In terms of design esthetics, multimedia features, media handling capabilities, display quality and add-ons - we really appreciated the component video cable included with the unit - we still think first place belongs to the Toshiba Qosmio G35-AV600 (which at $2,399.99 at this writing is our most expensive unit).

On the other end of the scale, we have to take Sony to task for making watching DVDs and TV on its VAIO AX580G an either-or proposition. Since you must remove the DVD player from the media bay to insert the TV tuner/capture module, Sony has made it impossible to watch a DVD and record a TV show at the same time. This is not necessarily an everyday activity for every MCE user, but it is a situation that comes up from time to time. The other notebooks can handle the task, so why not the Sony?

We also had some minor quibbles with the Fujitsu unit. At 12.38 pounds with power supply, and 10.49 without, it was the biggest and bulkiest of the bunch. We also found the mouse buttons and some of the other control buttons occasionally unresponsive, so we had to push buttons hard or multiple times to make them work. Also, the power supply plug that connects to the unit struck us as flimsy and likely to break, either over time or by unfortunate accident. We also found it odd that Fujitsu elected to use 4,200 RPM drives, when 5,400 RPM drives are so widely available. And finally, though the Fujitsu's screen boasted the highest native resolution (1600x1200) and included the most powerful graphics chipset (ATI Mobility Radeon X1400), our viewing experience was less positive, subjectively, than for either the Toshiba Qosmio or the HP Pavilion.

The Acer's strong second place finish in the MobileMark 2005 tests, and its generally good showing elsewhere, makes us wonder if it isn't a bit of a sleeper in this field. Though it is priced at about $2,000 (MSRP) at this writing, with newer models in the offing and budget prices from discount dealers, you can probably beat that number by an additional $200 to $300 if you wait a few months. At $1,700 to $1,800 it would be a good buy for the money.

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