LIFESTYLE WORKHORSES - Acer Ferrari 4002, the Fujitsu LifeBook LBN3510, the IBM ThinkPad T43, the MSI MegaBooks M520 and M630, and the Samsung R50 and X20

'Workhorse' notebooks are designed to be desktop replacements, so weight and size generally aren't considered that important. But we were comparing lifestyle laptops here-the ones we tested even in this category certainly did not resemble briefcases! They were also rich on features and looks, but, of course, were a little less portable than those in the previous category. These laptops are the kind that corporate bigwigs such as CEOs, chairmen, and so on would use, and these will, generally speaking, adorn the living rooms of the rich and famous.

As we said earlier, the laptops were categorized as ultra-portables and workhorses based on screen size and weight. The workhorse category comprised laptops that had -a diagonal screen size of more than 14 inches and weighed over two kg, and which therefore had a larger form factor. Eight laptops from six brands emerged in this category. These included the Acer Ferrari 4002, the Fujitsu LifeBook LBN3510, the IBM ThinkPad T43, the MSI MegaBooks M520 and M630, and the Samsung R50 and X20.

Features

The Processor

Most of the laptops here were based on Intel processors and motherboards, with the exception of the Acer Ferrari 4002, which featured the AMD Turion 64 ML-30 processor-and the MSI MegaBook M630, which had an AMD Sempron 2800+.The MSI Megabook M520 had a Pentium M 1600 MHz processor. The rest featured Intel Pentium M 1733 MHz processors.

The RAM

The MSI Megabook M630 and the IBM T43 had 256 MB, and the rest were equipped with 512 MB of memory. The Fujitsu LBN3510, IBM T43, LG LW60 Express and both the Samsung laptops had DDR2 memory. The rest featured DDR memory.

The Display

Five of the eight laptops featured a 15.4-inch display. The MSI MegaBook M520 and the Samsung X20 each featured a 15-inch display. The IBM T43 featured the smallest of the displays at 14.1-inches.

The IBM T43, the MSI MegaBook M520 and the Samsung X20 featured an LCD display with a normal aspect ratio and a native screen resolution of 1024 x 768, whereas the other laptops featured wide screens and a native resolution of 1280 x 800. like the Sony VAIO in the previous category, the Fujitsu LBN3510 had the best display in this category, with very large viewing angles.

Ports and Connectivity

Four of the laptops had four USB ports each. The IBM T43 had only two. All the laptops had a FireWire port for high-speed video capture from supported hardware. Though serial ports were not available on any of these laptops, a parallel port was provided in the IBM T43 and the LG LW60. Only the Acer Ferrari, IBM T43 and LG LW60 had infrared. The Acer Ferrari, IBM T43 and S270 and the Samsung laptops had Bluetooth.

All the laptops were Wi-Fi conformant with the b+g high-speed standard, except for the MSI Megabook M630 and the Acer Ferrari 4002, which had the slower WiFi 802.11g. The Acer, IBM and Samsung X20 had Gigabit Ethernet, whereas the rest had 10/100. All the laptops had 56 Kbps modems.

Multimedia

Every laptop had a microphone-in and headphone-out. D-Sub and S-Video out was also featured on all the laptops. The Samsung laptops, the Fujitsu LBN3510 and the MSI Megabook M520 even had a standalone DVD/Audio CD player-you can activate the player before you boot into the OS!

Multimedia and memory card reading capability was featured on all the laptops except for the IBM T43 and the MSI Megabook M630. The Samsung R50 and the Acer Ferrari supported most types of memory cards-SD, MMC, MS, MS Pro and XD.

Other features

The Fujitsu LBN3510 came with the highest capacity hard drive-100 GB-followed by the Acer Ferrari with an 80 GB. The IBM and the MSI Megabook M630 only had 40 GB hard disks. The MSI, LG and Fujitsu had slower 4200 rpm hard drives, while the rest were at 5400 rpm.

The Acer Ferrari had the best graphics solution in the form of a PCI-Express ATi Radeon X700. The Samsung X20 had an ATi Mobility Radeon X600, which was the second-best solution. The above two led the pack in the gaming benchmark scores. The other laptops had graphics solutions such as the ATi X300 and Intel integrated graphics.

The Acer Ferrari came with a slot-loading multi-format DVD burner. The Fujitsu and the LG, too, had multi-format DVD-Writers. The MSI laptops were equipped with DVD-RW drives.The IBM and Samsung laptops came with only combo drives. The Acer Ferrari had a port replicator, which can be used to add ports. It also had a DVI connector to connect an external digital display such as an LCD.

The IBM had a night lamp feature, which illuminates the keyboard so you can work at night with the lights off! Scroll scope on the touchpad was another noteworthy feature found on a few of the laptops-the LG, MSI and Samsung.

Usability

The IBM T43 had the smallest form factor, which was expected since it was the laptop with the smallest LCD. But the Samsung X20 weighed less at 3 kg despite having a larger form factor. The Fujitsu LBN3510 was the heaviest at 3.85 kg.

Ergonomics

The Acer Ferrari scored the highest in terms of accessibility of ports, followed closely by the IBM: their ports were nicely spread around the periphery and were easily accessible. In the keyboard feel and touchpad sensitivity ratings, none could match the IBM T43, which goes to prove that the reputation IBM has for its excellent keyboards and touchpad is justified.

The Acer Ferrari could only come a close second. Ergonomically too, the IBM was a real pleasure to work with. The Acer and Fujitsu tied for second place in the ergonomics department. The speakers on the Acer Ferrari and the Fujitsu LBN3510 were the best. Samsung's X20 sounded OK and got the next-best rating.

Package contents

The Fujitsu LBN3510, LG LW60 Express and MSI Megabook M630 came with Windows XP Home Edition SP2 preinstalled, whereas the rest came with Windows XP Professional SP2 preinstalled A driver and recovery CD or D`VD of some sort accompanied each laptop.

All the laptops came with some sort of CD-Writing software, except for the LG LW60. The Fujitsu came with Norman Virus Control CD, whereas the others came with Norton Antivirus 2005, except for the MSI laptops-which came with no Antivirus software at all. DVD players such as PowerDVD and WinDVD came with almost every laptop, while some such as the MSI laptops even had a bundled game DVD.

The Acer, Fujitsu and MSI were the only ones that came with a leather carry case. A screen wiping cloth was provided with the Acer and Fujitsu.

A Bluetooth mouse was bundled with the Acer Ferrari. A remote was bundled with the Fujitsu and MSI Megabook M630 for standalone DVD/Audio CD functionality.

Performance

ZD-Bench Business Winstone 2004

The Acer Ferrari stood first in ZD-Bench Business Winstone 2004, with a score of 21.5.The Fujitsu LBN3210 and the Samsung X20 were close behind with 20.9 and 20.2 respectively. The lowest score was 14.2, by the MSI Megabook M630, possibly due to its (weaker) Sempron processor. This laptop was the slowest in the video encoding test is well, where it took 214 seconds to encode the video. There was a tie for first place in the video encoding test, with the Fujitsu, LG and both Samsung notebooks completing the encoding task in 186 seconds.

SiSoft Sandra 2005

In the SiSoft Sandra 2005 CPU benchmarks, the IBM T43 scored the highest. The Fujitsu, LG and the Samsung laptops scored more or less the same. In the memory benchmarks, the Samsung R50 scored the highest, while the MSI Megabook M630 scored the lowest, possibly due to its lower amount of (slower) memory. None came even close to the file system benchmark scores of the IBM T43, which scored a drive index of 33 MB/s. The Acer Ferrari scored the next best drive index of 30 MB/s.

Game Test

In the game test, as was expected, the Acer Ferrari with the PCI-Express ATi Radeon X700 zoomed past the others, scoring 154 fps in Call of Duty and 84.88 in FarCry. The Samsung R50 with the PCI-Express ATi X300 and the Samsung X20 with the ATi Radeon 9600 also scored well in the gaming tests. The MSI Megabook M630, with the SiS 330 Mirage graphics chip, failed the Call of Duty test because it couldn't meet the minimum hardware requirements of the game.

PCMark 04

The Samsung X20 scored 3,551 PCMarks which was the highest, followed by 3,524 by the Fujitsu LBN3510. For an unknown reason, the LG LW60 kept crashing in PCMark 04. We even reinstalled the OS to see if this could be gotten around, but PCMark still crashed.

DisplayMate

There was no clear winner in the DisplayMate test. But in the viewing angle test, the Fujitsu was the clear winner: the text viewing angle was 170 degrees, and the movie viewing angle 160 degrees.

Battery life

The Samsung R50's battery lasted the longest-179 minutes. Not far behind were the Acer Ferrari and the LG LW60 Express, with battery lives of 175 minutes each. The MSI Megabook M630 couldn't go beyond 122 minutes.

Wi-Fi test

With a NetCPS score of 2.12, the Fujitsu LBN3510 was the highest scorer in this test. The Acer Ferrari, with 802.11g, scored just 1.26 and was justifiably placed last. In the file copying test, the MSI M630 which featured 802.11g was the slowest, taking 123 seconds to copy our data. The Samsung R50, LG LW60 and the MSI M520 took 45 seconds and stood first.

Flaunt value

The Acer Ferrari stood apart from the rest of the laptops. It was different in many ways-all the necessary f6atures were there, such as Bluetooth and infrared, and it could read every type of memory card. Its ATi X700 PCIExpress card put it ahead in the gaming tests. It has a unique, rich chequered design, and the Ferrari logo on the outside as well as on the inside. It even came bundled with a Bluetooth mouse that also had the Ferrari logo!

For its designer looks, good build quality, specifications and features, and the Ferrari insignia associated with it, we gave the Acer Ferrari 4002 the highest flaunt rating of 8.19.

Next was the IBM ThinkPad T43 which, with its rough-and-tough looks and a slightly boxy design, seemed more like a business laptop. IBM has incorporated innovative features into its laptops, such as motion sensors that park the hard drive head when they detect that the laptop is falling. Then there were some other important features such as fingerprint recognition and the dual pointer option.

Thanks to its rugged build quality, good design and the brand name, the IBM T43 came in second in the flaunt value department with a score of 7.61. The Fujitsu laptop, had a nice finish, and had some useful features such as fingerprint recognition. It was comfortable to work on, and its 15.4-inch widescreen LCD display was above average. Though it was the heaviest of the lot, we rated it third.

Fourth up was the Samsung Note PC X20,which, too, had the standalone DVD/Audio CD player feature. It had some cool features such as Samsung's DNIe and DNSe for image and soun enhancement. The ATi Radeon 9600 card is good for graphics-intensive applications.

Conclusion

Priced at $2700, the Fujitsu LifeBook LBN3510's pricing almost worked against it. But it still managed to grab the Digit 'Best Buy Silver' award, due to its good performance, features and impressive package contents.

The Digit magazine ‘Best Buy Gold'winner here was the Acer Ferrari 4002, with its designer looks, good overall features, performance and specifications, as well as a great flaunt value.

A Final Word

In this comparison test, we've seen some notebooks that can be considered niche. The Acer Ferrai looks simply great, and the Ferrari logo create an aura of sorts around this laptop.

Similarly, the Sony VAICI, too, had looks and features that could blow anyone away. The'VAIO name itself has a certain magic to it.

The Apple PowerBook G4 was in a league of its own. it is the ultimate in style, and is laptop with an attitude. If you are searching for a laptop to brag about without a platform in mind, your search ends here. This is the laptop for you-period!

If you're out to make a point and re-affirm the world that you're no mere mortal, go get one of these!

Review of Lifestyle Ultra Portables