How to Buy a Laptop?

While tablets get all the attention these days, there’s a reason why laptops continue to be the computing device of choice for most people. Notebooks offer real keyboards for faster typing, they’re better at multitasking, and they offer a lot more power for everything from editing video and creating PowerPoints to playing the latest games. So what type of laptop should you get?

There’s a wide variety of sizes, features, and prices, which makes choosing the right notebook a challenge. That’s why you need to figure out what your needs are. To make the right call, just answer the following seven questions.

1. What Size Do You Need?

If you’ll be using your laptop primarily at home and won’t be moving it much from room to room or using it on your lap, get a laptop with a 15-inch display (generally 6 pounds and up). This is the most popular screen size.

However, for the best balance of mobility, performance, and battery life, consider a laptop with a 13- to 14-inch display (3.5 to 5.5 pounds). If you want to travel really light, get an ultraportable laptop with an 11.6- to 12-inch screen (3 to 4 pounds).
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Opt for a 17-inch or 18-inch notebook if you plan on moving your machine rarely or not at all. Having a bigger screen is better for watching movies and working with multiple windows open at once. But we only recommend stepping up to a large display if you get a resolution higher than 1366 x 768 pixels. Otherwise, it’s a waste of extra space.

Netbooks (10 inches) have pretty much fallen out of favor because of tablets, but they’re still available. If possible, get a model with a resolution of 1366 x 768.

2. How Much Can Your Get for Your Money?

    * $500 to $600: These days, you can easily find an all-purpose laptop with good performance for about $500. We’re talking about a speedy dual-core Intel Core i3 or an AMD A6 processor, 3 to 4GB of RAM, and at least 320GB of hard drive space. That’s good enough for most consumers looking to surf the web, go on Facebook, check email, and play casual games.
      
    * $600 to $800: As you get above $600, you’ll start to see more premium designs, such as metal finishes. Manufacturers also start to add in other features as you climb the price ladder, including better audio and backlit keyboards. Look for a second-generation Core i5 processor in this range, as well as 6GB of RAM and a 500 to 640GB hard drive.

      If you’re willing to spend $700 or more, expect laptops with faster processors (such as Intel’s quad-core Core i7) and/or dedicated graphics cards from AMD or Nvidia for gaming. Adding a Blu-ray drive will cost at least $75 more.
    * Above $800: If you have $800 or more to spend, you’ll mostly be looking at laptops that focus on multimedia and gaming, as well as highly durable and secure business machines. Higher-resolution screens are also expected.

      All of Apple’s laptops also fall in this price range, as the company focuses on premium designs and higher-end features, such as solid state drives in the MacBook Air. MacBooks start at $999. So-called Ultrabooks, which compete directly with the MacBook Air in terms of thinness, start as low as $799 but go up to and beyond $1,499.

3. Will It Be Comfortable to Use?

The most impressive specs in the world don’t mean diddly if the laptop you’re shopping for doesn’t have good ergonomics. Does the keyboard have solid tactile feedback and enough space between the keys? Is the touchpad smooth to operate or jumpy? Do the mouse buttons have a satisfying click, or do they feel mushy? How well do multitouch gestures work? You should be able to zoom in and out with ease, as well as select text with the touchpad without the cursor skipping around.

In general, Apple and Lenovo offer the best keyboards and touchpads. Toshiba is generally pretty reliable in this category, as is Sony. Acer and ASUS don’t offer the most ergonomic designs, so you’ll want to try before you buy.

Five Things to Look for in Your Next Notebook Keyboard

4. What Specs Do You Need?

Notebook specs such as CPU, hard drive, RAM, and graphics chip can confuse even notebook aficionados, so don’t feel bad if spec sheets look like alphabet soup to you. What you need really depends on what you plan to do with your laptop. More intensive tasks such as 3D gaming and HD video-editing require more expensive components.
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Here are the main components to keep an eye on.

    * CPU: Bargain hunters will find AMD’s E Series processor in machines that cost less than $400, which offers better performance than a netbook but not very good multitasking chops. Similarly, Intel’s Pentium CPUs can get the job done, but you can do better if you spend a little bit more. (Intel Atom processors are only for netbooks, a category that’s on the decline.)

      For mainstream performance, we recommend Intel’s Core i3 processors. AMD’s A Series processors aren’t as fast as their Intel counterparts, but they offer better graphics performance.

      Power users and gamers should consider higher-end Intel Core i5 or Core i7 CPUs.
    * RAM: When it comes to memory, or RAM, opt for a minimum of 3GB (4GB is better) to run Windows 7 Premium. Those who demand more performance will want to spring for 6GB or even 8GB of memory.
      
    * Hard Drive: For most users, a fast drive is more important than a large one. If you have a choice, go for a 7,200-rpm hard drive over a 5,400-rpm unit. Even if you have several movies and games on your hard drive, a 320GB should provide more than enough space, but 500GB drives usually don’t cost much more.
      
    * Solid State Drives (SSDs): These drives cost quite a bit more than traditional hard drives and come with less capacity (usually 128 to 256GB), but they dramatically improve performance. You’ll enjoy faster boot times, faster resume times, and faster application open times. Plus, because SSDs don’t have moving parts such as mechanical drives, failure is much less of an issue.
      
    * Display:The more pixels you have, the more content you can fit on-screen, and the sharper it will look. Most notebooks come with 1366 x 768-pixel resolutions. However, if you have the option to choose a laptop with a higher pixel count—1440 x 900 or 1600 x 900—always choose the highest res you can get. You’ll see more of your favorite web pages, multitask better, and have a better movie-watching experience. Full HD panels (1920 x 1080) cost about $150 more than your typical display, but are worth the splurge, especially on larger screens.
      
    * Graphics Chip: For the most part, an integrated graphics chip (one that shares system memory) will be fine for basic tasks, including surfing the web, watching video, and even playing some mainstream games. But a discrete graphics processor from AMD or Nvidia (which has dedicated video memory) will provide better performance when it comes to the most-demanding games. Plus, a good GPU can accelerate video playback on sites such as Hulu, as well as speed up video editing.

      A couple of quick notes on graphics cards. In general, 1GB of video memory will be fine for mainstream games, but more-demanding gamers will want 2GB of dedicated memory. If you like the idea of your laptop switching between integrated and discrete graphics to save battery life, Nvidia’s technology (called Optimus) is superior to AMD’s because it’s seamless.
    * DVD/Blu-ray Drives: Netbooks don’t have optical drives, and they’re also disappearing from lightweight notebooks. That’s because you can download most software and download or stream video from the web. Unless you burn discs or want to watch Blu-ray movies, you don’t need one of these drives and can save some weight by avoiding them. At this point, DVD drives are a safety blanket.

5. Mac or Windows?

This is not an easy question to answer, especially if you’ve never considered making the switch from Windows to Mac. But this quick overview of each platform’s strengths and weaknesses should help.
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Apple’s MacBook Airs and MacBook Pros offer an easy-to-use operating system in Mac OS X Lion. It offers iOS-like features such as Launch Pad for your apps, superior multitouch gestures, and Auto Save and Resume so you can pick up on your work right where you left off. Macs also tend to outperform similarly configured Windows machines, especially when it comes to boot and resume times. While Windows PCs offer more software choices, Apple makes it easier to find and install programs with the Mac App Store.

MacBook Airs and MacBook Pros also tend to outclass most Windows machines when it comes to the sturdiness of their industrial designs, the touchpad, and display quality. However, Apple’s notebooks start at $999.

Windows 7 notebooks are generally more affordable and offer a much wider range of design choices from more than a dozen major vendors. Windows machines also have access to a much bigger selection of software, especially when it comes to games. Windows 7 is certainly easier to use than previous versions of Windows, and includes convenient features such as Snap (to view two open windows side by side). And if you care about security, there are many Windows notebooks explicitly designed to appeal to the business crowd.

Mac OS X Lion vs. Windows 7: Which OS is Best?

6. How Much Battery Life Do You Need?

Even if you only plan to move your laptop from the desk to the couch and the bed or from your cubicle to the conference room, battery life matters. Nobody wants to be chained to a power outlet, even if there’s a socket within reach. If you’re buying a 15-inch notebook, look for at least 4 hours of endurance.
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If you expect to be fairly mobile, shop for notebooks that offer more than 5 hours of battery life, with 6-plus hours being ideal.

If given the choice, pay extra for an extended battery; you won’t regret it. Keep in mind that some notebooks (such as the MacBook Air) feature sealed batteries that you can’t easily upgrade yourself.

To determine a notebook’s expected battery life, read third-party results from objective sources—LAPTOP notebook reviews, for example—rather than taking the manufacturer’s word for it. Your actual battery life will vary depending on your screen brightness and what tasks you perform (video eats more juice than web surfing).

Best Battery Life: Laptops That Last 7+ Hours

7. Do You Trust the Brand Behind It?

Your laptop is only as good as the company that stands behind it. Accurate and timely technical support is paramount, which is why LAPTOP evaluates every major brand in our annual Tech Support Showdown. This past year Apple came in first place, followed by Dell, Samsung, and Lenovo.

Support is only part of what makes a notebook brand worth your money. You also have to consider how the manufacturer stacks up to the competition in terms of design, value and selection, review performance, and other criteria. Apple, Lenovo, and HP notched first, second, and third place, respectively.

ASUS Zenbook Prime UX31A Review

ASUS's original Ultrabook was the first ultraportable laptop to give the MacBook Air a run for its money, but it ultimately fell short. The new ASUS Zenbook Prime UX31A (starting at $1,099, $1,499 as configured) is a sequel to truly get excited about. This successor has the same sleek spun metal design and offers lots more eye candy on the inside with a new 1080p IPS display. The Prime also adds a comfier backlit keyboard and a third-generation Intel Core processor for a serious speed boost. Do all of these ingredients add up to the best Ultrabook yet?

Design

ASUS ZenBook Prime UX31AClick to EnlargeFrom the outside, the Zenbook Prime looks like a dead ringer for its predecessor -- and we're not complaining. The 3-pound Ultrabook is just as elegant as ever, thanks to a dark brushed metal lid with a subtle circular pattern that emanates from the ASUS logo. (It's a little darker than the UX31). The inside and bottom of the Prime sport a lighter brushed aluminum finish with a vertical pattern.

The overall construction feels as solid as ever, even if the corners are a bit sharp for our tastes. We also find the lid easier to open on the UX31A than the UX31.

ASUS ZenBook Prime UX31a Side ViewClick to EnlargeAt 13.3 x 8.9 x 0.44-0.66 inches (our measurements), the Zenbook Prime has the same dimensions as the original UX31. The HP Envy Spectre XT (12.9 x 8.7 x 0.6 inches) and Dell XPS 13 (12.4 x 8.1 x 0.7 inches) manage to cram a 13-inch display into a 12-inch chassis using a thinner bezel. Nevertheless, we don't think users will mind the slightly wider and taller body on the ASUS. It's easy to slip into a bag or backpack, and will easily fit on an airline tray.

Just like the original, the Zenbook Prime features a speaker integrated into the display hinge, and a very large touchpad sits underneath the keyboard. The layout is now black instead of silver, making the keys easier to read.

Our only real quibble with the design is that the display sometimes flopped back, which happened during a bumpy bus ride and on a couple of occasions when picking the Ultrabook up. But the lid doesn't fall back very far.

Keyboard

ASUS ZenBook Prime UX31a KeyboardClick to EnlargeAll the keys are in the same place on the Zenbook Prime, but they feel a lot better. That's because ASUS ripped out the old silver layout and added black keys with much improved travel (12 percent better key cap travel distance). Typing this review felt fluid and fast on the UX31A, compared with the mushier experience on the UX31.

Just as importantly, ASUS made this keyboard backlit, making the layout much easier to see in our dimly lit living room.

ASUS ZenBook Prime UX31a BacklightClick to EnlargeYou can also adjust the intensity using a function key combination. Annoyingly, the right side of the keyboard didn't get as bright as the left, but ASUS assured us that final production units shouldn't have this issue.

So what did ASUS not fix? That would be reversing the function row to make them direct access keys. We'd much prefer adjusting the volume, brightness and other settings without having to execute a key combo.

Touchpad

ASUS ZenBook Prime UX31s TouchpadClick to EnlargeThe good news is that the Zenbook Prime's 4.1 x 2.8-inch Elan touchpad can provide a satisfying navigation experience. The bad news is that we had to tweak some settings to make that happen. At first the cursor was too unwieldy, especially when typing, and we would accidentally type over our work. However, once we disabled both tapping and drag and drop in settings, the UX31A was less temperamental.

Most multitouch gestures worked smoothly right out of the box. We quickly three-finger flicked through photos, and three-finger flicking up for switching windows and flicking down to show the desktop were both responsive. Pinch to zoom and rotate also worked well.

Two-finger scrolling was inconsistent in our testing, however. On applications such as WordPad we scrolled smoothly and quickly, but the same gesture was sluggish in both Chrome and Internet Explorer.

Heat

While slightly warmer than its predecessor, the UX31A managed to stay pretty cool during our tests. After streaming a Hulu video at full screeen for 15 minutes, the touchpad measured 83 degrees Fahrenheit, the space between the G and H keys was 91 degrees, and the middle of the underside was 92 degrees. All are less than what we consider uncomfortable: 95 degrees.

Display

ASUS ZenBook Prime UX31a DisplaysClick to EnlargeIf you have the means, splurge for the $1,399 configuration of the Zenbook Prime. Not only is this 1920 x 1080 matte panel sharper than the MacBook Air--and most other 13-inch laptops--it's superbright and offers generously wide 178-degree viewing angles.

When we hit the UX31A with our light meter, the display averaged 423 lux, which is brighter than the older UX31 (391 lux) and well above the ultraportable average (219 lux). The Zenbook Prime also handily beats the MacBook Air (285 lux) and Samsung Series 9 13-inch (355 lux).

To compare picture quality, we put the Zenbook Prime and MacBook Air side by side and played "The Avengers" trailer in full HD. We preferred the warmer colors on the ASUS, which made skin tones look more natural and explosions pop more. In addition, the Prime's matte screen allows for wide horizontal and vertical viewing angles, on a par with the Air.

Is 1080p on a 13-inch notebook overkill? Not to us, because you get full HD video playback and the ability to see more content on screen when surfing the Web and when snapping two windows side by side. The trade-off is that that you often need to zoom in to read text.

Audio

Powered by Bang & Olufsen's ICEPower technology, the speakers embedded in the Zenbook Prime's hinge delivered moderately loud and clean-sounding audio. When streaming Fun's "We Are Young," Nate Ruess' vocals had a nice warmth. However, Coldplay's "Speed of Sound" sounded louder and fuller on the UX31 than the Zenbook Prime.

The sound effects in "Angry Birds" came through loud and clear when we played the game on the Chrome browser, as did the audio on "The Avengers" trailer. We just wish the audio controls were more robust; the UX31A only has the standard Windows enhancements.

Ports

ASUS ZenBook Prime UX31a USB 3.0 PortClick to EnlargeThe Zenbook Prime keeps ports to a minimum, with a USB 3.0 port, headphone jack and SD Card reader on the left side. A micro HDMI, mini VGA port, second USB 3.0 port and power jack line the right side. You're going to have to spring for an HDMI or VGA adapter if you want to output video to an external display. By comparison, the slightly thicker UX32 will have a full-size HDMI port and three USB 3.0 ports.

Webcam

ASUS ZenBook UX31a WebcamClick to EnlargeThe Zenbook Prime's webcam is capable of capturing 720p video, but you'll need a fair amount of ambient light to get a bright picture. When near a window, the blue in our shirt popped, but the background was fuzzy. When we merely swiveled our chair around away from the window, the picture got so dark we could barely make out our face. We're also not fans of the Lifeframe software.

Performance

We can't tell you yet exactly what processor powers the Zenbook Prime UX31A (model number or clock speed), but we can say that the third-generation Core i7 CPU, 4GB of RAM, and 256 GB solid state drive under the hood really make this ultraportable fly.

On the PCMark07 test, which measures overall performance, the Zenbook Prime scored 4,989, which is nearly double the ultraportable category average (2,593) and well above the UX31 (3,606) and Dell XPS 13 (3,521). Then again, you should expect faster performance from an Ivy Bridge Core i7 CPU withn an SSD. The only lightweight laptop we've tested that comes close to the Zenbook Prime is the Eurocom Monster (4,299), which has Ivy Bridge and discrete Nvidia graphics.

The Zenbook Prime took 4 minutes and 59 seconds to complete the LAPTOP Spreadsheet Macro Test, in which we use OpenOffice calc to match 20,000 names with their addresses. That showing bests the the HP Folio 13 (6:44), UX31 (5:50) and the IdeaPad U300s (5:05).

So how about transcoding video? The UX31A took 30 seconds to convert a 5-minute 1080p video to an iPhone friendly format using Cyberlink's MediaEspresso. That time is actually a bit behind the Dell XPS 13 and Samsung Series 9 15-inch (both 29 seconds) but ahead of the Folio 13 (41 seconds). However, our pre-production version of the Zenbook Prime didn't have Intel's latest video drivers; we expect performance to improve once those become available.

The SanDisk SSD inside the Zenbook Prime is faster than your typical hard drive, but not as speedy as other Ultrabooks. The notebook duplicated a 4.97 GB folder of multimedia files in 1 minute and 39 seconds for a rate of 51.4 MBps. That's faster than the ultraportable average (46 MBps), but slower than the older UX31 with an ADATA SSD (98 MBps). By comparison, the XPS 13 notched 137.5 MBps and the Air 127 MBps.

Boot and Wake Times

Thanks to the 256GB SSD, booting into Windows 7 took the UX31A only 23 seconds, which is faster than the Dell XPS 13 (27 seconds), UX31 (29 seconds) and HP Folio 13 (26 seconds). The Air is still faster at 17 seconds, but this notebook will never keep you waiting. That also applies to wake from sleep. Upon lifting the lid, the Zenbook Prime sprung back to life within 2 seconds.

Graphics
Intel's third-generation Core processors promise increased graphics performance via Intel HD Graphics 4000 technology, and the Zenbook Prime delivers just that. When playing "World of Warcraft," the Ultrabook notched 52 frames per second at 1366 x 768 resolution. That's considerably better than the UX31 (40 fps) and category average (36 fps). Even on 1080p resolution, the Prime achieved a playable 36.3 fps with the settings on Good.

On 3Dmark06, the UX31A turned in an impressive score of 5,021, which beats the MacBook Air in Boot Camp mode (4,236) and every other Ultrabook we tested, most of which have scored in the 3,500 range.

If you want more graphics muscle, ASUS will also offer a version of the Zenbook Prime with the Nvidia GT620M discrete GPU with 1GB of video memory.

Battery Life

ASUS ZenBook Prime UX31a BatteryClick to EnlargeThe original Zenbook's 50-watt-hour battery lasted a fairly good 5 hours and 58 mintues on a charge. The new Zenbook Prime lasts 6 hours and 28 minutes, or a half-hour longer. That's impressive endurance given that this configuration uses a faster Core i7 processor and the older UX31 had a Core i5. The 13-inch MacBook Air lasted 6:25 and the XPS 13 and 5:46. However, the HP Folio 13 supplies nearly 8 hours of juice (7:50), while the Toshiba Portege Z835 lasted 6:48, albeit with a slower Core i3 CPU.

Software and Warranty

ASUS ZenBook Prime UX31a ASUS VibeClick to EnlargeOut of the box, the Zenbook Prime will hit you with two types of pop-ups pretty consistently unless you act on them. One is McAfee Internet Security and the other is ASUS Webstorage, which provides 2GB of free space for one year. We say activate the security and stick with Dropbox, Google Drive or Windows SkyDrive instead of opting for a whole new service. Other ASUS programs of note include the Vibe Fun Center for accessing Music, Games and Books, Instant Connect for taking your notebook online via an Android smartphone and FaceLogon for logging on with facial recognition.

ASUS covers the Zenbook Prime with a one-year warranty that includes parts, labor, and one instance of accidental coverage as well as 24/7 support. See how ASUS fared in our our Tech Support Showdown and Best & Worst Brands repots.

Configuration Options

The ASUS Zenbook Prime UX31A will start at $,1099 with a Core i5 processor and 128GB SSD. Stepppking up to the $1,199 model gives you TPM security. Our $1,499 configuration adss a Core i7 processor and 256GB SSD. All of these models include a 1080p display.

ASUS will sell another version of the Zenbook Prime, the UX32A, starting as low as $799. For that price you get Core i3 performance and a 320GB hard drive with 24GB SSD and a 1366 x 768 screen. The UX32 line is slightly thicker but adds an additional USB port and full-size HDMI port.

Want an Ultrabook with discrete graphics? ASUS will also offer a $1,299 Zenbook Prime, the UX32 VD, with an Nvidia GT620M discrete GPU with 1GB of video memory. The company promises twice the performance of Intel's HD 4000 graphics along with Optimus support for automatic graphics switching to preserve battery life. However, you won't get an SSD at this price; it will be a 320GB or 500GB hard drive plus a 24GB SSD.

Verdict

ASUS ZenBook Prime UX31a OutroClick to EnlargeAfter testing the Zenbook Prime, it's clear that ASUS worked hard to improve its Ultrabook. Although the $1,499 price of our configuration isn't cheap, you get a sharper screen than the 256GB MacBook Air for $100 less. And the new backlit keyboard is much easier to type on than the previous Zenbook. Add in a faster 3rd-gen Core i7 CPU and longer battery life and ASUS has elevated its Ultrabook from a very good product to one of the best money can buy. The only drawbacks are a slightly wonky touchpad and relatively slow SSD. Overall though, the Zenbook Prime is our new favorite Ultrabook.

Eurocom Monster Review

Eurocom's 11-inch Monster ($1,444) may be small, but with its Intel Ivy Bridge processor, Nvidia 650M graphics and solid-state drive, it packs more than enough power to go toe-to-toe with some of the biggest and baddest gaming machines on the planet. But a gaming machine needs more than strong performance numbers to be considered a must-have.

Design

Eurocomm MonsterClick to EnlargeFor a gaming notebook, the Eurocom Monster has a relatively subdued look to it. Its rubberized lid features a nearly imperceptible grid pattern that is bisected by a pinstripe that runs through its center. In the middle of the pinstripe sits a silver Eurocom logo. The system feels good, but it doesn't have the premium, more menacing vibe of the Alienware M11x.

Pop the lid and you'll see the same rubberized material and grid pattern found on the Monster's wrist rest and touchpad. The keyboard deck also gets a rubberized treatment, although no grid pattern. In the top left corner of the Monster's keyboard deck sit the system's green Wi-Fi, hard drive, caps lock, number lock and scroll lock indicators. Opposite those is the Monster's large power button complete with a blue LED.

Measuring 11.5 x 8.3 x 1.5 inches and weighing 4 pounds, the Eurocom Monster is lighter than the Alienware M11x (4.4 pounds), but it has a chunkier profile. The Alienware measures 1.3 inches thick. Overall, the Monster reminds of an oversized premium netbook.

Display

Eurocomm Monster DisplayClick to EnlargeNext to excellent performance numbers, one of the most important things a gaming notebook needs is a top-notch display. Unfortunately, the Eurocom Monster is saddled with a glossy 11.3-inch panel (1366 x 768) that's relatively dim. The screen registered just 173 lux, compared with the category average of 228 lux.

Images were still sharp and colors accurate while watching a 1080p trailer for "The Amazing Spider-Man." Viewing angles, however, were subpar, making it tough to watch Peter Parker's exploits at a 45-degree angle.

Audio

Eurocom built the Monster's speakers into the rear of the Monster's underside, which caused the audio to sound slightly muffled when the notebook was in our lap. That issue aside, the Monster pumped out crisp and accurate audio.

While listening to Jay-Z and Kanye West's "H.A.M." bass notes were on point, and the dramatic breakdowns in the song still had the same intense impact as they would on a larger system. The heavy guitar riffs and guttural sounds of All That Remain's "Overcome" were equally clean.

Keyboard and Touchpad

Eurocomm Keyboard/TouchpadClick to EnlargeWe didn't experience any trouble crushing goons while playing "Batman: Arkham City" on the Monster's chiclet-style keyboard. That's because the WASD keys (and other keys) offer satisfying feedback. We were able to run through Arkham without skipping a beat.

That said, the direction keys on the right side of the keyboard are incredibly small, so gamers accustomed to using those to navigate might have a difficult time. Touch typists will also be frustrated by the shrunken right Shift key.

The Monster's Elan multitouch touchpad features the same textured rubberized material found on its keyboard deck. Overall, we found the touchpad to be accurate and well-suited for gaming.

Heat

The Eurocom Monster managed to remain cool when pushed to its limits. After running "Batman: Arkham City" on its highest settings for 15 minutes, the Monster's keyboard was still a relatively cool 83 degrees. The touchpad was a bit hotter at 94 degrees, while the system's underside was 95 degrees. We consider temperatures of 95 and below to be comfortable.

That's not to say the Monster doesn't generate its share of heat. In fact, the left corner of the notebook's underside, where the system's vents are located, reached 108 degrees.

Ports

Eurocomm Monster PortsClick to EnlargeEurocom outfitted the Monster with a good number of ports for such a small system. On the left side are its two USB 3.0 ports, headphone and microphone jacks, HDMI port, VGA connector and Ethernet port. The right side features a USB 2.0 port, lock slot and power jack. Up front, you'll find the Monster's 9-in-1 card reader. Because it lacks an optical drive, gamers will need to download digital copies of their games (or use an external drive).

Webcam

Eurocomm Monster WebcamClick to EnlargeThe Monster's 1.3-megapixel webcam captured disappointingly grainy images. Photos and videos of faces lacked significant detail, whether in a well-lit setting or more softly lit room. When we tried using the cam with a strong light source to our back, the image got washed out.

Graphics and Gaming

Eurocomm Monster GamingClick to EnlargeFor a manufacturer to call its laptop a gaming machine, it has to pack it with some of the best hardware on the planet. And that's exactly what Eurocom did with the Monster. This little guy comes with Nvidia's Kepler-based GeForce GT650M with 2GB of RAM. While not as powerful as, say, the Nvidia GTX 670M graphics chip found in the excellent MSI GT60, the Monster muscled its way to some strong scores.

With the graphics set to auto-detect, the Eurocom Monster ran "World of Warcraft" at a blistering 179 frames per second. That's better than the Samsung Series 7 Gamer's (Nvidia GeForce GTX 675M with 2GB of RAM) 167 fps and the ASUS G75VW-DS71's (GeForce GTX 660M GPUs with 2GB of RAM) 158fps. When we set the graphics settings to max, the Monster still managed 96 fps, besting the category average of 16 fps and the ASUS G75VW's 88 fps.

The Eurocom Monster also managed to party with the big boys when it came to running "Batman: Arkham City." With the graphics at their lowest setting and the resolution set to 1,366 x 768 (the Monster's max), we cleaned up Gotham's streets at a brisk 41 fps. When we pumped the graphics up to Very High and switched on Direct X11 and 4X MSAA, the Monster dropped to an unplayable 22 fps.

It's worth noting that rendering graphics on the MSI GT60's 15-inch and the ASUS and Samsung's 17-inch displays at their native resolutions requires more processing power than it takes to the Monster's to power its lower-res 11-inch display.

Performance

The Eurocom Monster is the smallest Ivy Bridge notebook yet to land in our labs. But don't let its diminutive footprint fool you. The Monster's 2.6-GHz Intel Core i7-3720QM quad-core processor, 8GB of RAM and 120GB SSD make for a potent combo.

On the PCMark 07 test, which measures a PC's overall performance, the Monster scored 4,299. That's almost double the category average of 2,476 and nearly 1,000 points better than the MSI GT60's score of 3,336 (2.3-GHz Intel Core i7-3610QM quad-core processor, 12GB of RAM and dual 500GB, 7,200-rpm HDDs). The Monster even managed to outclass the Samsung Series 7 Gamer, which scored 3,611 on the same test (2.3-GHz Intel Core i7-3610QM quad-core processor, 16GB of RAM and dual 750GB 7,200-rpm HDDs).

The Monster's 120GB SSD made quick work of our LAPTOP File Transfer test, moving 4.97GB of mixed media files in 45 seconds. That's a rate of 113 MBps. The average ultraportable manages 45 MBps.

Just as impressive was the Monster's blazing boot time: just 19 seconds.

Software

Eurocomm Monster AudioClick to EnlargeEurocom doesn't cram any bloatware down your throat like other manufacturers. Our system came with Windows 7 Ultimate, THX TrueStudio Pro audio software and that's all.

Configurations

Our $1,444 Eurocom Monster review unit came with a 2.6-GHz Intel Ivy Bridge Core i7-3720QM quad-core processor, 8GB of RAM, a 120GB SSD and Nvidia GeForce GT 650M graphics chip with 2GB of RAM. If you're looking for even more power, you can step up to the big leagues and outfit the Monster with a 2.7-GHz Intel Ivy Bridge Core i7-3820QM quad-core processor, 16GB of RAM and 600GB SSD for $3,409.

If, however, you're in the market for a gaming machine and are on a sub-$1,000 budget, you can pick up a Monster with an Intel 2.3-GHz Intel Core i5-2410M dual-core processor, 4GB of RAM, a 500GB 7,200-rpm HDD and Nvidia GeForce GT 650M with 2GB of RAM with no operating system installed for $899.

Battery Life

Eurocomm MonsterClick to EnlargeWhen it comes to gaming laptops, battery life is usually an afterthought, and the Eurocom Monster is no different. On the LAPTOP Battery Test, the Eurocom's 6-cell lithium ion battery lasted just 3 hours and 28 minutes. That's well below the ultraportable category average of 6 hours and 49 minutes, but not too bad when you consider how its fellow gaming rigs fared on the same test.

Verdict

Eurocomm Monster OutroClick to EnlargeThe Eurocom Monster proves that you can get an 11-inch notebook with serious gaming muscle. This pricey but very capable $1,444 mini rig can play the latest titles and go with you anywhere, and the built-in SSD adds an extra dose of speed. However, the keyboard feels netbookish, and we wish the display were brighter. Despite these drawbacks, the Monster is an impressive little powerhouse.

Business Laptop Review

Why Buy a Business Laptop?

Our employment can take us to different cities, states and countries. Oftentimes, one of the most important things we take with us on these work-related excursions is our business laptop. This computing device stores all of our most important documents, presentations, emails and more. Without a strong laptop, traveling to and fro can become a hassle and a headache.

Business-oriented individuals need durable, fast and long-lasting business laptops. A good laptop for business must have several connectivity options for linking different computers and external devices for presentations or other tasks. Having a long-lasting battery life is also a must, because a drained battery on a long business trip can become an aggravating and frustrating occurrence. Overall, the best business laptops help you get your job done no matter where you are or what time it is.

For additional resources and advice, look at our articles on business laptops. Also, don't forget to check out our top three products – the HP EliteBook, Dell Latitude and Samsung Series 7. Each of these laptops offers exceptional features to keep your workflow strong, even while you're on the road. And for a practical, innovative way to access remote files on your laptop.

Business Laptops: What to Look For

There are numerous laptops available that offer excellent features and tools to increase your productivity and help you get all of your computing tasks accomplished with no problems. We looked at the best laptops for completing business-oriented tasks. Below are the criteria we used to evaluate the best business laptops.

Features
A computer's feature set defines how you interact with it on a daily basis. For business users, this means getting the job done no matter where you are. The best business laptops provide an office experience at home, in a coffee shop, on an airplane or on a commuter train. Wherever you happen to be working, make sure the laptop you buy has an operating system that can handle your workload, a screen big enough for you to see comfortably and a battery that will last the entire excursion away from the office.

Performance
Processors and video cards in today's machines perform at speeds that would make The Flash blush. A laptop that is just a couple of years old now feels antiquated and slow. Additionally, business software has become more complicated and requires more system resources to function properly. To this end, ensure that your business laptop has an avant-garde processor and video card. This way you can spend more time working and less time babysitting a progress bar.

Memory/Storage
Those who travel a great deal are experts in packing their suitcases to maximize their portability on the road. Essentially, business laptops are digital suitcases with fewer restrictions on what you can take with you. These days, gigabytes are in ample supply; there's no reason not to pick a business laptop with as much memory and storage as you can put your hands on.

Connectivity
When you reach your destination, it's almost a certainty that you will hook your business laptop up to something. Whether it's simply syncing your iPod or wiring yourself to a physical network, take care that your laptop has the proper ports and connections that enable all your devices to talk to each other. Generally, the more connectivity, the better. An Ethernet port is standard on all devices now. Additionally, most laptops come with at least one USB port. The best have two or three.

Other physical docks that are good but not necessary are VGA ports, media-card readers, webcams, HDMI ports and more.

Wi-Fi is this generation's dial tone. All laptops have it, and if they don't, they should. Another must-have wireless connectivity option to look for is Bluetooth. This technology allows you to connect directly to other computers or devices without the need for a network.

Help & Support
Even well built machines sometimes have faulty equipment or occasionally require maintenance. Unfortunately, you'll almost never have a trained IT professional traveling with you. The manufactures of your business laptop know this and are more than willing to help. Every laptop producer worth its salt provides plentiful help and support options. All you have to do is ask – by email, live chat, forums and more. If you're old fashioned, pick up the phone and dial tech support to speak with a friendly representative.

If you find a computer that provides these features, you will have an excellent business laptop that will give you the computing power you need while you're on the go. Don't settle for just any laptop computer. Find a business laptop that will meet the demands of your busy work-related lifestyle.

HP ProBook 6360b

Sometimes an extra 100MHz isn't worth the money. The HP ProBook 6360b business laptop costs $989 (direct) as one of HP's ready-to-ship models with a 2.5GHz Intel Core i5-2450M processor, 500GB hard drive, and three-year parts and labor warranty. Our test configuration, however, had a slightly quicker 2.6GHz Core i5-2540M CPU and slightly smaller 320GB, 7,200-rpm hard drive. To match it, we had to go into the custom configurator on HP's enterprise site and spend $1,699. That's misleading because such corporate custom orders are rarely for quantities of one—rather, they're for IT-department buys that earn volume discounts—but still, we'd gladly settle for the 2.5GHz model and appreciate the ProBook 6360b's other charms at the expense of unnoticeably slower times in stopwatch tests.

And charms there are, though in a somewhat dated design. HP's ProBook line slots in below the company's EliteBook series as a mainstream, value-conscious choice for small to medium businesses and the likes of government offices and educational institutions. The ProBook 6360b is a 13.3-inch ultraportable with a burnished aluminum lid with latch and a magnesium-reinforced ABS plastic chassis. Though not business-rugged like the EliteBooks, it features a bottom case with a drain to help protect against minor spills.

Design
The ProBook 6360b is of course rectangular, not square, but we found ourselves thinking of it as square in a "not hip, daddy-o" way: It's a bland-looking slab measuring 1.3 by 12.7 by 8.7 inches (HWD) and weighing 4.8 pounds—definitely on the hefty side compared to, for instance, our Editors' Choice ultraportable, the 3.2-pound Toshiba Portege R835-P88 (Best Deal: $779.99 at CompUSA.com).

The 13.3-inch screen offers the usual 1,366 by 768 resolution and a nice matte antiglare finish. Text and fine details looked crisp and colors were vivid across a moderate range of viewing angles. Brightness and contrast were good as long as we kept the backlight to its top three or four settings. Audio is decently loud and clear.

Its chiclet-style keyboard could be the 6360b's best feature. The layout is faultless, with dedicated Home, End, PgUp, and PgDn keys (albeit with HP's usual laptop quirk of half-sized up and down arrows sandwiched between full-sized left and right arrows), and the slightly scalloped keys fit the fingers comfortably. Typing feel is firm, with good travel. Both a touchpad and pointing stick are on hand for mouse maneuvers; the twin pairs of buttons work smoothly but the concave stick doesn't grip the finger as well as one of Lenovo's TrackPoints.

Three buttons above the keyboard toggle Wi-Fi, launch your Web browser, and mute audio. When the ProBook 6360b is switched off, the middle button launches QuickWeb, which (once configured for a favorite Wi-Fi network) brings up a browser and widgets such as a stock ticker and weather and news headlines in about 20 seconds without booting Windows.

Features
Don't look for Intel Wireless Display (WiDi) for giving presentations on an HDTV set—the ProBook 6360b doesn't even have a wired HDMI port. Nor will you find USB 3.0 for connecting up-to-date storage devices. Instead, the HP has four USB 2.0 ports—one a USB/eSATA combo port—along with Ethernet, FireWire, VGA, DisplayPort, and 56Kbps modem ports, plus microphone and headphone jacks. There's an ExpressCard slot on the left side, just above the DVD±RW drive, and an SD/MMC media reader on the front bezel.

Broadcom 802.11a/g/n Wi-Fi and Bluetooth wireless are standard, as is a docking-station connector on the laptop's bottom. A fingerprint reader below the keyboard gives added security, as does the HP ProtectTools suite preloaded on the 320GB, 7,200-rpm hard drive. The latter is a set of utilities that helps with functions such as encrypting data, managing passwords and authentication, and sanitizing files—overwriting and deleting them so they can't be recovered. Our ProBook had a three-year upgrade to the standard one-year limited warranty, which offers pick-up or carry-in protection with no on-site service.

Performance
HP ProBook 6360b Equipped with a 2.6GHz Core i5-2540M processor and 4GB of RAM, the ProBook 6360b delivers solid performance. Its PCMark 7 score of 2,305 and Handbrake video encoding time of 1 minute 45 seconds are virtually identical to the Toshiba R835-P88's 2,313 and 1:46, respectively. It tied the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 (Best Deal: $1,265.99 at ANTOnline) in CineBench R11.5, with a score of 2.85 points, and was a few seconds faster than its peers in Photoshop CS5 (3:48).

Leader Impression I7A

The Leader Impression I7A ($179 list) is a budget-friendly way to enjoy a taste of Google's latest "Ice Cream Sandwich," Android OS 4.0. This tablet is for geeks only, as it's laggy and somewhat unstable, and doesn't support the Google Play app market. But with a sub-$200 price tag, a decent display, and a surprisingly solid metal enclosure, Android geeks may be willing to put up with its stability and performance issues.

Design and Features
The resemblance between the I7A and the original Apple iPad is uncanny, with both featuring brushed metal backs with flattened edges—only the I7A is shrunken down to 7 inches. At 6.73 by 5.19 by 0.45 inches (HWD) and 9.44 ounces, the I7A is comfortable to hold, but a bit odd-shaped compared with most 7-inchers. The Amazon Kindle Fire ($199, 4 stars) is taller and narrower at 7.5 by 4.7 by .45 inches (HWD), and heavier at 14.6 ounces. Despite using the same 16:9 screen aspect ratio as the Kindle Fire (Best Deal: $199.00 at Amazon), the I7A's body has more of a 4:3 ratio, mimicking the iPad. A hard reset pin hole, micro USB port, mini HDMI port, microSD card slot, and Volume buttons all sit along the top edge. I was easily able to mirror 1080p video onto a large HDTV using an HDMI cable—a nice touch for a budget tablet. The Power button can be found on the left edge, while a Back button can be found on the right. Along the bottom edge is the 3.5mm headphone jack and power port, for charging with the included AC adapter (you can also charge using the included micro USB cable.)

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Leader Impression I7A : Horizontal
Leader Impression I7A : Back
Leader Impression I7A : With Case
Leader Impression I7A : Angle

The I7A uses a 7-inch TFT LCD with 1,024-by-600-pixel resolution, the same resolution found on the Kindle Fire. The screen itself gets relatively bright, with a wide viewing angle and pleasantly saturated colors. Details are generally sharp, though text has a fuzziness to it that strained my eyes after extended use. There is also some uneven lighting around the edges of the screen. The screen is on par with the one found on the Kobo Vox ($199, 2 stars), though the I7A has a wider viewing angle.

This is a Wi-Fi only tablet that connects to 802.11b/g/n networks, but only on the 2.4GHz band. Leader advertises Bluetooth, but I couldn't find any way to connect to devices. A 0.3-megapixel front-facing camera works with Skype calls, but there is no rear-facing camera. Also included in the box is a protective folio case, which feels a bit cheap, but is useful for propping up the I7A on desks.

Hardware, Performance, and OS
The metal chassis gives the I7A a premium feel, but underneath the hood are far more pedestrian components. The I7A is powered by a single-core 1GHz VIMICRO Cortex-A8 processor and 512MB RAM with 4GB of internal storage. Only 2.56GB are available for user data, but storage can be expanded by up to 32GB with a microSD card.

Given the low-end specs, it was no surprise that the I7A's performance struggles. Home screen animations appeared smooth, but touch input itself is often jerky, scrolling is rarely smooth, and precise movements are limited by what seem like click-stop intervals built into the screen. In a game like Angry Birds, instead of having complete control of infinitely variable shooting angles, finger swipes move the aim up or down at small, but noticeably set intervals. Web pages load a bit slowly and app crashes were fairly common. Switching between video playback and other apps often caused some hang-ups. It's not as bad as the Kobo Vox (Best Deal: $59.98 at Walmart.com), but nowhere near as smooth and hiccup-free as the Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 (7.0) ($249, 4 stars), which also runs ICS.

While more and more tablets are getting the "Ice Cream Sandwich" treatment, it was still a pleasant surprise to find Google's latest OS running on such an inexpensive tablet. The I7A uses a stock build without heavy skinning, but it lacks Google apps, including the Google Play app market. Instead, the I7A comes with the GetJar app market, which offers a mediocre selection of third-party apps. Some popular apps like Angry Birds and Dolphin HD browser are here, but the selection is a far cry from the Google Play market. I was able to use the Amazon Appstore to download and install apps like Deer Hunter Reloaded. Leader did include an APK installer for side loading apps, but this isn't exactly a user friendly solution. While the I7A is free of bloatware, some of the pre-loaded apps, like the Kobo reader app, do not work at all.

Video playback is smooth, and the I7A can handle MPEG4, H.264, Xvid, and DivX videos at up to 1080p resolution. In our battery test, which loops a video with brightness set to max and Wi-Fi turned on, the I7A lasted only 3 hours, 15 minutes—a good deal shorter than the Kindle Fire's 4 hours, 55 minutes in the same test.

The Leader Impression I7A offers an interesting combination of solid build quality, moderate performance, and the latest Android OS at one of the lowest prices we've seen yet. But it's outside the standard Google realm, which limits its appeal to folks who know what they're doing with Android tablets, and its imprecise touch input and stability issues keep us from recommending it to average consumers.

Tablet buyers on a budget should spend just $20 more for a more stable Kindle Fire, though that doesn't run ICS. On the other hand, it's entirely possible to hack ICS onto the Fire, and if you're shopping for an edgy tablet like the Leader Impression, you very well might be the kind of person with the skills to do so. If you demand a classy Android 4.0 experience out of the box, pony up for the $249 Galaxy Tab 2 (7.0), which strikes a great balance between performance, features, and price.

Acer Iconia Tab A510

Acer's new Android tablet, the Iconia Tab A510 ($449.99 list), doesn't give you quite enough for your money. The tablet market is insanely competitive: You have to deliver on style, price, or apps to succeed. While the A510 (Best Deal: $449.99 at Amazon) is a decent Android 4.0 tablet with the latest quad-core processor, it's beaten by its competitors in nearly every measure.

Physical Design
If you're used to the sleek metallic edges of the latest Asus or Toshiba tablets, the A500 will be a bit of a disappointment. At 6.9 by 10.2 by .4 inches (HWD) and 23.5 ounces, it's slightly thicker and heavier than its top competitors. For instance, the Asus Transformer TF300 ($399, 4 stars) is just a little slimmer at .38 inches and lighter at 22.2 ounces, and the Asus Transformer Prime ($499, 4 stars) is slimmer and lighter still.

But it's not the size that's the issue here. Acer uses a lot of plastic and not much metal in the black-and-silver case, leading to a slightly chintzy feel. The mildly textured plastic back is practical, but doesn't feel premium, even when compared to other plastic tablets like the Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 (7.0) ($249, 4 stars).

The A510's odd-looking MicroUSB jack comes with an adapter that turns it into a full-sized USB port. The tablet supports external USB keyboards and storage, as long as that storage is formatted as FAT32. That's pretty hot; it means you can play videos off an external hard drive on this tablet. Asus and Toshiba tablets have that feature too. There's also a built-in mic on top, a rotation lock, and dual speakers on the bottom.

Turn on the Iconia 510 and you get a workaday 1280-by-800-pixel LCD panel, which is absolutely standard on midrange 10-inch tablets. That's on par with the latest models from Asus, Samsung, and Toshiba, although many tablet watchers are holding out for the upcoming 1920-by-1200 models, which will compete more closely with the new Apple iPad's ($499, 4.5 stars) 2048-by-1536-pixel screen.

Acer touts its 9800mAh / 36.26W battery as a cure for battery-life blues, and we got strong performance with it: 9 hours, 34 minutes of continuous video playback with Wi-Fi on and brightness turned to max. That beat out the 7 hours, 53 minutes we got on the Asus TF300 (Best Deal: $399.99 at P.C. Richard & Son), not to mention the five and a half hours the new iPad achieved.

Android and Apps
The A510 runs Android 4.0.3 with a light skin, Acer's Ring UI. Take a look at our full review of Android 4.0 (4 stars), Ice Cream Sandwich, for more details on the basic OS here.

Pressing a virtual button at the bottom of the screen pops up five quick app shortcuts, a carousel of Web bookmarks, and a volume control. The tablet also comes with a few custom widgets and apps. Acer Print lets you print documents or Web pages to a wide variety of Wi-Fi-enabled printers. Aupeo is a custom radio app. McAfee does antivirus duty, Polaris Office reads Microsoft Office documents, and clear.fi is a DLNA media server.

Benchmarks came out looking great, as they generally do on tablets with Nvidia's blazing Tegra 3 processor. Running here at 1.3GHz, the A510 scored faster than the 1.2GHz Asus Transformer Pad TF300T and roughly on par with the original Transformer Prime (Best Deal: $499.99 at P.C. Richard & Son), which also had a 1.3GHz quad-core processor.

But I encountered strange performance slowdowns when testing the A510. Sometimes on-screen buttons weren't responsive; I found this both on the built-in keyboard and in Zen Pinball. Sometimes screens took an extra moment to render. These issues didn't occur all the time, but they happened often enough to annoy (and to lose some pinball games).

10-inch Android tablets still have a problem with finding good apps in Google Play. As most apps are designed for small phone screens, many prominent apps look pretty awful on large Android tablets. The A510 offers two options to help with this problem: You can download either Tablified Market ($1.49, 4 stars), with a list of 1,500 or so top-notch tablet apps, or Nvidia's Tegra Zone, with a few dozen high-quality games designed for Tegra-powered tablets. Those outlets improve the situation, but app availability still falls far short of the Apple iPad, which has over 200,000 third-party apps with UIs designed specifically for tablets. The A510 connects to the Internet using Wi-Fi 802.11b/g/n (albeit only on 2.4GHz, not 5GHz). It had no trouble connecting to our WPA2-protected networks. It also supports Bluetooth 2.1. And there's a blocked-off SIM card slot behind a door on the side, a sloppy touch—either eliminate the slot or make it active.

Multimedia and Conclusions
The A510 has 32GB of built-in storage as well as a microSD card slot that supports 32GB cards, hidden behind a door on the side. It plays all the usual audio and video formats, including MP3, AAC, WMA, OGG, WAV, WMV, H.264, MP4, DivX and Xvid (in AVI containers). Video files up to 1080p resolution looked sharp and clear. Oddly, though, the built-in micro HDMI port only put out 720p resolution to our TV.

The tablet has a 5-megapixel rear camera and a 1-megapixel front camera. Indoor shots taken with the rear camera looked noisy, with a decidedly purple cast. Not great.  Low-light photos showed some blur from low shutter speeds. Outdoors, images were sharper, but still with that purplish color imbalance. The front camera's 1-megapixel still images actually had better colors.

The tablet records 1080p video at 30 frames per second outdoors, but indoors that drops to a jittery 16 frames per second. 720p videos indoors clock in at 20 frames per second. As I know the Nvidia Tegra 3 processor can handle 1080p at 30 frames per second without breaking a sweat, this is probably just a cut-rate camera module.

If the Iconia Tab A510 cost $50 less, it would have a different rating. Priced at $450, this tablet sits in an uncomfortable middle ground. It certainly has some things going for it, most notably its long battery life and powerful speakers.

Unfortunately for the A510, you can get more capable tablets for less. The Asus TF300T, at $399 for a similar 32GB model, gives you 95 percent of the A510's speed, along with a better camera and slimmer form factor, for less money. The Apple iPad 2, currently running $399, is another prime competitor—it isn't as fast as the Iconia 510, but it has far, far more tablet-optimized apps. I'd also keep an eye out for Toshiba's upcoming tablet line, which we did a recent hands-on with. It promises Tegra 3 power and Android 4.0 with USB host mode in a sleeker body.

Panasonic Toughbook CF-31

The Panasonic Toughbook CF-31 ($4,843 street) is not indestructible. Let us shoot it with a machine gun or run over it with a bulldozer, and we bet we could put a dent in it. But put Panasonic's fully rugged laptop in harm's way with the kinds of environments and applications that police forces and field workers encounter, and it'll laugh off treatment that would shatter a normal laptop like Bonomo Turkish Taffy—surviving 300 pounds of pressure on its closed lid, for instance, or repeatedly being dropped from six feet (while closed and switched off; from three feet while open and running), or ignoring nearly six inches of rain in an hour. The IP65 weatherproofing and MIL-STD-810G shock, vibration, and temperature torture tests are a laptop engineer's nightmare. The Toughbook CF-31 (Best Deal: $4,929.71 at Rugged Depot) takes them in stride, making it overkill (and overpriced) for business travelers but a sturdy solution for vertical markets that demand maximum durability in a desktop replacement.

The CF-31 that Panasonic sent PCMag for review is an older model, with a first-generation 2.53GHz Intel Core i5-540M processor and ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5650 graphics adapter. While a few of Panasonic's resellers such as Mobile Ingenuity are still selling such CF-31 Mark I systems, comparable units now on sale (at around the same price) feature newer Core i5-2540M and Radeon HD 6750 silicon. Presumably later this year we can look forward to CF-31 Mark III units built around Intel's new "Ivy Bridge" processors. The Toughbook's general design and rugged construction, however, remain unchanged—as does the consistent docking-station and dashboard-mounting solution that's served Panasonic and its customers for over a decade.

Design
The CF-31 is a hefty small suitcase, measuring 2.9 by 11.9 by 11.5 inches and weighing 8.8 pounds, complete with a pull-out carrying handle on its front edge. The sides, bottom, and border of the lid are made of hard black plastic, with the lid and palm rest made of silver magnesium alloy. The handle has a hole and tether cable anchor to hold the plastic stylus for the touch screen.

Some touch screens are dim, but the Panasonic's 13.1-inch panel is exceptionally bright. Designed to be readable outdoors, it's almost too bright or washed-out indoors at its highest backlight settings, but offers vivid colors and sharp contrast at medium settings. It's an old-fashioned 1,024 by 768 non-widescreen with fairly narrow viewing angles, but the touch screen responds accurately to a tap of stylus or finger.

The chiclet-style keyboard has a clicky, medium-soft typing feel; Fn-F12 cycles through several backlight levels, though even the brightest is relatively dim. The Delete key is at the lower right, by the cursor arrows, instead of at the upper right where it belongs, but there are dedicated Home, End, PgUp, and PgDn keys. The touchpad is unfortunately tiny—roughly 2.25 by 1.5 inches—and requires too much force—a sharp rap—to register a tap, so we relied on its twin mouse buttons to click and the stylus or a finger to scroll or move the cursor large distances.

Features
The CF-31's ports and pieces are hidden behind hinged doors or panels that snap shut with a secure click. On the Toughbook's left side are the double-latched battery pack and a cupboard door revealing the modular DVD±RW drive; PC Card, ExpressCard, and Smart Card slots; and an SD memory card reader. On the right are the removable 250GB hard drive (320GB in current models) and HDMI, Ethernet, and two USB 2.0 ports plus the AC power connector. Two more USB 2.0 ports, a docking station connector, a VGA port, and headphone and microphone jacks are at the rear, along with a serial port.

Our test unit was also outfitted with a fingerprint reader for security and Gobi 2000 3G mobile broadband, as well as 802.11a/g/n Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. Windows XP was preinstalled, with Windows 7 Professional—32-bit, not 64-bit—provided on DVD. We installed the latter for our tests; normally we'd gripe about a 32- rather than 64-bit OS for gamers and media editors, but we don't think people are likely to use such apps on a Toughbook. Indeed, we suspect most customers will either use specialized vertical-market software for the likes of patrol cars and utility crews or focus on customized in-house applications. We also think their laptops will be just getting broken in by the end of Panasonic's three-year limited parts and labor warranty.

Performance
Panasonic Toughbook CF-31 We also think that most Toughbook users aren't interested in raw speed—they're more concerned with whether their laptops can withstand drops from three feet while operating (ours did, with no ill effects aside from the display flopping down) or other abuse (such as standing on ours). That said, the dual-core Core i5-540M-equipped CF-31 with 4GB of RAM proved to be no speed demon, but a tolerable, faster-than-a-netbook performer for everyday purposes.

Its PCMark 7 score of 1,386 trailed newer-CPU'd, business-rugged portables such as the HP EliteBook 2560p (Best Deal: $1,099.99 at TigerDirect.com) (2,640) and Panasonic's own Toughbook CF-S10 (Best Deal: $2,135.46 at 2020_PC) (2,164). Its Handbrake video-encoding time of 2 minutes 11 seconds tied the Dell Latitude E6420-ATG (Best Deal: $5,043.00 at Dell SMB), while its 32-bit Photoshop CS5 time of 6:06 suffered by comparison to laptops running the 64-bit version of Adobe's image editor.

The Radeon HD 5650 discrete graphics helped the CF-31 to a playable 33.8 frames per second in Crysis at medium quality settings, though it missed the 30-fps threshold (23.3 fps) in Lost Planet 2 and fell to an unplayable 8.4 and 14.5 fps in the two titles, respectively, at high quality settings.

The CF-31 has a hefty 91Wh battery pack, which lasted a respectable 6 hours 8 minutes in our MobileMark 2007 rundown test. That's three hours shy of the exceptional Toughbook CF-S10 time, but ahead of the Dell Latitude E6420-XFR.

For most laptop shoppers, the Panasonic Toughbook CF-31 is almost off the charts both application- and budget-wise; the company makes semi-rugged and business-rugged Toughbooks with more mass-market appeal. But for professionals who need its extreme durability, it's a rock-solid (almost literally) choice.

MSI GT70 0NC-011US

All the motivational posters in PC Labs say, "Press the Turbo Button." The MSI GT70 model 0NC-011US ($1,999.99 direct) laptop has a button for what the company calls its Turbo Drive Engine that purports to give extra graphics performance. We tried the button (which only works under AC, not battery, power) and found it gave anywhere from a 0 percent to 4 percent boost in gaming benchmark scores. We also found that, when it comes to discussing the MSI GT70's speed and engineering features, it ranks well down the list.

Priced $600 below the MSI GT783-625US that copped an Editors' Choice for under-$3,000 gaming laptops less than two months ago, the GT70 flaunts one of Intel's brand-new, third-generation Core "Ivy Bridge" processors, the 2.3GHz Core i7-3610QM quad-core, along with 16GB of DDR3 memory and a particularly hardcore storage system: Its 750GB, 7,200-rpm hard drive is relegated to second-banana status behind a pair of 64GB SanDisk U100 solid-state drives, yoked together under RAID 0 for blazing speed. Add Nvidia GeForce GTX 670M graphics, a SteelSeries multicolor backlit keyboard, and a Qualcomm Atheros Killer E2200 Gigabit Ethernet adapter that promises to optimize gaming throughput at LAN parties, and you've got a ton of hardware for your two grand. Or 8.3 pounds of hardware, anyway.

Design
The MSI GT70 Best Deal: %displayPrice% at %seller% has a handsome, typically bulky (2.2 by 16.9 by 11.3 inches, HWD) black case with brushed aluminum lid and palm rest and plastic sides and bottom. A light-up MSI logo mid-lid serves to intimidate, or at least inform, your opponents.

The glossy plastic around the 17.3-inch screen is somewhat reflective, but the matte-finish display itself is not. It's a full HD (1,920 by 1,080) panel with vivid colors, jet blacks, and ample brightness. MSI ships the system with text and icons set to 125 percent size for squint-free viewing, but you can change them back to 100 percent via Windows' Control Panel.

The black tile- or chiclet-style keyboard offers a first-class, slightly clicky typing feel and full-sized numeric keypad, though we were disappointed that Home and End are doubled up on the PgUp and PgDn keys. There is no context-menu key, either; the Windows key is moved to its place, out of gamers' way. While there are no special gaming keys, the SteelSeries keyboard supports up to 10 simultaneous key actions as well as left, center, and right backlighting zones; a supplied utility lets you choose backlight colors or wavy or pulsating ("breathing") light effects. The touchpad and its twin mouse buttons work smoothly.

Touch-sensitive LEDs above the keyboard include the aforementioned Turbo Drive button; a Cooler Boost button that increases fan speed—causing cacophonous fan noise—when the action gets hot and heavy; keyboard backlight and Wi-Fi toggles; a screen blanker; and the eject button for the Blu-ray burner. Some of these, like the options in an S-Bar software utility/program launcher that hovers at the top of the screen, duplicate items on the function keys. Always looking to pare down bloatware, we turned off S-Bar, only to find the optical drive eject button stopped working and there's no physical button on the drive itself. At least right-clicking the drive and selecting Eject in Windows Explorer still worked.

Features
Next to the Blu-ray drive on the MSI's right side are two USB 2.0 ports, with three USB 3.0 ports plus a memory-card reader and four audio jacks—headphone, microphone, line-in, and line-out—on the laptop's left. At the rear are VGA, HDMI, eSATA, and Ethernet ports.

Windows 7 Home Premium and the GT70's software preload—a handful of utilities, Microsoft Office and Trend Micro Titanium Internet Security trials, and Magix photo, video, and music managers—leave 70GB of the RAID SSD drive C: available. A recovery partition leaves 687GB free of the D: hard drive. MSI backs the GT70 with a two-year limited warranty.

Intel Wireless Display (WiDi) is missing, but Bluetooth and 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi are present on the wireless front. Two Dynaudio speakers and a subwoofer crank out fairly loud, fairly bass-worthy sound.

Performance
MSI GT70 0NC-011US The MSI GT70 is a productivity and general performance benchmark monster. Its Core i7-3610QM processor powered the laptop to a Cinebench R11.5 score of 6.26, within hailing distance of the mighty and pricey Alienware M18x's 6.52, while its dual SSDs contributed to a sky-high PCMark 7 score of 4,375, topping even the 4,099 of its GT783-625US Best Deal: %displayPrice% at %seller% sibling.

How to Buy a Netbook

The first batch of netbooks to hit the scene was greeted with awe and surprise. Those tiny laptops, which were once sold at a premium, could be had for half the price of a typical system seemed incredible. Since then, netbooks have taken a backseat to tablets, as the Apple iPad and countless "me-toos" have caused a lull in their production. Furthermore, full size laptops, which used to cost twice as much as netbooks, are now competing in this price range. But that doesn't mean demand for netbooks have fizzled out completely. Sure, the stakes have risen, and netbooks manufacturers are now vying for a spot in a very tight space, which is why the latest crop of netbooks have evolved to include more features, bigger screens and keyboards, and faster parts—all while slashing prices like a Walmart special.

Even though new netbooks aren't launching at a torrid pace, like they were a year ago, the choices are still mind boggling. They're available from all sorts of household names, such as ASUS, Samsung, Sony, Toshiba, Dell, HP, and Lenovo. As a category, netbooks are such a diverse group that it's hard to come up with a single, all-encompassing definition. The best indicators that you're dealing with a netbook are a low price, light weight, and low-powered components. It's likely the system will have a screen on the smaller side and a basic feature set. Still, netbooks vary in screen size, typing experience, and specialty features. On the component side, AMD and Intel are silently going at it, though neither has launched any new chips in a while. Despite their current state, there are certainly enough netbooks that warrant further explanation. Luckily, this netbook buying guide does just that.

Larger Screens, Bigger Keyboards
It's generally easy enough to tell a netbook from other laptops, but to distinguish between systems, you'll need to do a little homework. In the past, screen sizes defaulted to 10-inches with 1,024-by-600 resolutions on almost every single netbook. These days, netbooks are breaking away from this trend. Oversized netbooks like the HP Pavilion dm1z Best Deal: %displayPrice% at %seller% and Lenovo ThinkPad X120e (Best Deal: $600.99 at Amazon Marketplace) are sold with 11.6-inch widescreens, while the Lenovo IdeaPad S12 (Ion) and the Asus EeePC 1215B are shipping with 12-inch ones. And their resolutions, as a result, are upped to HD-capable ones (1,366-by-768).

Once upon a time, full-sized keyboards were few and far between, but now they exist in netbooks as small as 10-inches. Case in point: The Toshiba mini NB305-N600 Best Deal: %displayPrice% at %seller%, Lenovo IdeaPad S10-3, and Acer Aspire One D260-1270 squeezed one in to their 10-inch frames. Since the vast majority of newer netbooks are launching with bigger screens (11-12-inches), a full size keyboard is guaranteed.

Usual Array of Features, Some Exceptions
Most netbooks provide an abundance of USB ports, Webcams, card readers, and built-in Wi-Fi. What they usually don't come with is an optical drive. Some, like the Lenovo IdeaPad S10-3t and Dell Inspiron Duo Best Deal: %displayPrice% at %seller%, are convertible tablets that have a touchscreen on a rotating hinge. Bluetooth is a frequently bundled feature in netbooks, while embedded 3G modems, which can use cellular signals to acquire broadband speeds, can be found in the HP Mini 5103 (Best Deal: $479.99 at Amazon Marketplace) and Dell Inspiron Mini 10 (HD).

Atom Platform, Mostly
It used to be that the Intel Atom platform, made up of the Atom processor, integrated graphics, and memory (usually 1GB), was the most widely used in a netbook. Now AMD, with its latest Fusion APUs, has become a big presence in this space. Not only are AMD APUs faster any given Atom processor, but they're as battery efficient and have better graphics capabilities. You're also more likely to find 3GB-4GB memory configuration in AMD netbooks than from Intel ones. The AMD E-350 APU, for instance, can be found in the Lenovo Ideapad S205, Acer Aspire One 722-BZ480, and HP dm1z.

Intel is already into its fourth generation of Atom processors, the most recent of which are the 1.6GHz Intel Atom N455 and the 1.83GHz Intel Atom N475. These are single-core processors that have been updated with DDR3 memory support. The dual-core version—the 1.5GHz Intel Atom N550—can already be found in a handful of netbooks, and improves performance by up to 20% over the single-core Atoms, without impacting battery life.

What to Consider
Standard netbook batteries start with 3-cell (less than 30Wh) units, but many netbooks are now standardizing on 6-cell batteries. Our battery tests have shown that the smaller batteries will get you anywhere from 2 to 3 hours of battery life on a single charge, while the bigger ones range between 7 to 10 hours. If your activities include trips abroad and all-day classes, consider looking for netbooks that ship with 6-cell options. You'll also find two hard drive choices: solid-state drives (SSDs) and spinning hard drives. The consensus is that spinning drives offer the best gigabyte-per-dollar ratio, and most of them start with at least 250GB of storage space. While SSDs have faster transfer speeds, are durable, and have longer life spans, they command much higher premiums than their spinning counterparts. In an extreme case, upgrading to a 128GB SSD in the HP 5103 will cost you an additional $400, more than the entire price of our review system.

What You Can Do With Them
Don't underestimate the capabilities of these machines. Netbooks are not just limited to Web surfing, compiling spreadsheets, or word processing. You can offload your photos from a digital camera and edit them using a program like Adobe Photoshop Elements 9. With lots of patience, you can transcode video to another format using Windows Media Encoder 11 or edit video footage using Adobe Premiere Elements 9, or run your entire music library off of a program like Apple iTunes. A netbook can play video from sites like YouTube or a movie from an external USB drive, unmarred by distortions and lag. Businesses, too, are considering these pint-size laptops because you can run various e-mail clients, put them on a network, install a VPN client, and secure them with antivirus and antispyware suites.

At the price points we're seeing in the netbook market—namely $300 to $500—sex appeal isn't off limits either on a netbook. The HP 5103 has a sleek-looking aluminum frame, while the Toshiba NB305-N600 uses colors and textures in its favor. Though the future of netbooks remains a big question mark, what with the tablet boom and full size laptops that can be had for about the same price, the demand for them has not fizzled. There's a wide selection for those who want a pint-sized laptop that won't cost them an arm and a leg.

Laptop Computer Reviews

Why Buy a New Laptop Computer

Laptops are portable, stylish and highly efficient computing devices. They make it possible to continue working away from home or the office, accomplish schoolwork and view multimedia content. With so much available on these small devices, anyone can find some use for these computers, whether it's for business, work or play.

If you're a business professional, laptops allow you to take your work on the road. Their small size makes it easy to slide them in a bag and take them with you wherever you may go. The Wi-Fi connection on the laptop allows you to read, send emails or access the internet. For a student, a laptop is a worthy option for note taking during class; you can easily type papers on the large keyboard or read articles on the 11- to 17-inch display screen.

If you are looking for a laptop for multimedia activities, the best laptops offer webcams and built-in mics for web conferencing and video chats. They offer high-resolution displays and graphics for viewing movies or TV shows and a large hard disk for storing music, photos, movies and other files.

Take a look at our articles on laptop computers for more in-depth information regarding these computing devices. Don’t forget to look at our top-three laptop computers: the HP ENVY 17, Sony S Series and the Dell XPS 15z.

Laptop Computers: What to Look For

When deciding upon which laptop is best for you, you need to determine the type of work you will most frequently use your computer to perform. If you plan to use your laptop to check email, browse the internet or listen to music, you don’t need anything too powerful. However, if you plan to travel with your computer, store many files or documents and access information, you want a device with a long battery life, adequate hard-disk space, a memory-card reader, and Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connections.

Below are the criteria we used to evaluate laptop computers.

Design:
The main purpose of a laptop computer is portability. Each computer offers different dimensions, so it is vital that you look at the device before you buy it to ensure it is not too large. Laptops offer a vast selection of display features. You can find a screen size on one of these devices ranging from 11 inches up to 17 inches. You may find these computers in an assortment of colors from black and brown to bright green or orange. The top laptops are also ENERGY STAR qualified, meaning they have energy-efficient features.

Performance:
The best laptops feature a fast processor. You don’t want to wait around all day for files to download or applications to open. You also need a video card and an operating system that performs well and is user friendly.

Feature Set:
Several connectivity options such as Wi-Fi and Bluetooth are most often found in some of the top laptops on the market. In addition, you will find options with a webcam and a built-in microphone for video chats or web conferences. Several laptop computer models also include a few extra features such as a Blu-Ray disc drive or built-in security features.

Memory/Battery Life:
The memory and battery life available on your laptop are crucial. Without a large amount of internal memory, you can’t save all your files, applications, music and other content on your device. Most of laptops offer between 2GB and 8GB of RAM memory. In addition, without a long battery life, you may find yourself without power at the most inconvenient times. The best laptops offer up to 7 hours of battery life on a single charge.

Support/Warranty:
Wear and tear happens to electronic devices no matter how well you take care of them. Before you buy, look at the warranty for the device. Most computers feature a one-year warranty, but some may offer more, along with extended warranty options. Also, if problems occur, you need a company with customer-service representatives who will help you resolve your issues. Many manufacturers offer email, phone and live chat support for their customers to help them when technical problems arise.

If you combine all of these elements into one computing device, you will create the ultimate laptop computer. Portability, design, power, speed and space will all come together to give you the laptop that is the best fit for you needs.

Business Laptop - Apple MacBook Pro 15-inch (Thunderbolt)

As fate would have it, an Intel chipset glitch delayed shipments of almost every laptop manufacturer, save one. Apple, which has typically been last in transitioning to new technology, is now among the first to launch laptops with Sandy Bridge (known officially as second-generation Core CPUs)—and arriving first has its privileges. The Apple MacBook Pro 15-inch (Thunderbolt) ($2,199 direct) is the fastest laptop on our bench, thanks to a component overhaul that involves the first ever quad-core processor on a Mac laptop and a rekindled romance with AMD graphics. And then there's Thunderbolt, a new connection technology that has mounds of potential, but I'll contain my excitement until compatible peripherals ship. This, and a new Facetime HD Webcam, places the MacBook Pro 15-inch (Thunderbolt) at the peak of technology's Mount Olympus and earns it an Editor's Choice in the desktop replacement laptop category.

Thunderbolt Icon Is the only Design Change
Design-wise, don't expect a thinner or lighter laptop. The only change to the design is the addition of a Thunderbolt icon next to mini-Displayport. The MacBook Pro 15-inch (Thunderbolt) keeps its wondrous shape and form, since all of the changes are from within. At the moment, I don't see a need to alter its exterior. It's still the thinnest, most streamlined laptop in its class, made so by carving the center out of a thin slab of aluminum. It's at least a quarter of an inch thinner and about a pound lighter, at 5.5 pounds, than the Dell XPS 15 ($1,115 direct, 4.5 stars) (6.3 lbs) and Asus N53JF-XE1 ($1,015 street, 4 stars) (6.3 lbs).
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Apple MacBook Pro 15-inch (Thunderbolt) : Top
Apple MacBook Pro : Angle
Apple MacBook Pro 15-inch (Thunderbolt) : Angle
Apple MacBook Pro 15-inch (Thunderbolt) : Front

The MacBook Pro15-inch (Thunderbolt) has several screen options, all of which require that you pay a significant premium, although I can't think of many consumer laptops that have an anti-glare screen (a $150 option). There are laptops that can scale to higher resolutions, though. The XPS 15 and the N53JF-XE1 either ship or have an option for a 1080p display (1,920-by-1,080); the Macbook Pro 15-inch is available with a 1,440-by-900 or 1,680-by-1,050 display ($100). Still, having screen options is a luxury that few others are willing to offer. The HP Pavilion dv7-4283cl, for instance, is only available with a glossy screen and 1,600-by-900 resolution.

The chiclet-style keyboard carries on the Macbook Pro tradition of black keys that matches the black of the screen's bezel. Backlights, which are found between the keys and aluminum foundation, are absolutely invaluable in low-lit situations. You can also find a backlit keyboard in the XPS 15. The signature Apple clickpad dwarfs all others in terms of size and responsiveness. No other touchpad can recognize two- to four-finger gestures as accurately and fluidly as Apple's, and the reason for this is two-fold: First, it's made of glass, which doesn't wear out over time. Others use acrylic or some lesser material in their touchpad construction. Second, the coding drivers and software for the touchpad are created in-house (instead of through some third-party developer) so that each click, swipe, or pinch works to perfection.

What is Thunderbolt?
The last time Apple led the way with a new connection technology was when it initiated the FireWire standard. Thunderbolt, an I/O technology from Intel (codenamed Light Peak), operates under a similar principle in that it boosts transfer rates to unprecedented levels. The technology lives inside the mini-Displayport, so structurally the port looks exactly like the one in the previous MacBook Pro iterations. But when it's connected to a Thunderbolt-equipped peripheral, transfer rates can hit a theoretical 10Gbps. That's roughly 21 times the speed of USB 2.0 and FireWire 400, 12 times that of Firewire 800, and twice that of USB 3.0.

The Thunderbolt port, as Apple explains it, is essentially taking PCI Express—the channel that every port and slot goes through—out of the box. It's like finding the shortcut that gets you directly onto the five-lane highway. Originally, Intel designed Thunderbolt to work over an optical cable, but because it has yet to figure out how to power external peripherals through this method, copper is used instead. You'll need a new cable that runs from the Thunderbolt/mini-Displayport to the external device. Yes, it can still output to an external display—or connect to any device for that matter. As proof, Apple demonstrated a RAID server (made by Promise Technologies) attached to the laptop, which was then attached to an Apple Cinema Display, in a daisy chain configuration. Thunderbolt is bi-directional, meaning it can have two streams going at the same time—up to 10Gbps for each stream. In practice, for instance, you can simultaneously stream four uncompressed 1080p video clips from the RAID server to the laptop (first stream) and then display out to the Cinema Display at the same time (second stream) without lag or distortion. You can barely stream one uncompressed 1080p clip through FireWire, let alone four. During Apple's demonstration, transfer speeds were peaking at 5Gbps—the realistic speed of Thunderbolt, judging by the throughput meter Apple had in place.

You can also think of Thunderbolt as a universal port. If a company were to create a Thunderbolt hub or adapter, it can work with all sorts of connection technologies, including FireWire, USB 2.0, USB 3.0, eSATA, and Gigabit Ethernet. Remember, all of these technologies go through PCI Express at some point. Before you get too excited, though, Thunderbolt peripherals won't ship for months (the ones that were on display were prototypes), and Apple is rumored to have an exclusive on this technology until 2012. So doubts about its adoption rate is completely understandable. Update: Intel pointed out that there is no exclusivity on Thunderbolt, OEMs are free to implement it when they think the time is right.)

Facetime HD and Usual Suspects of Features
With the new HD Webcam sensor, video feeds no longer look grainy or grotesquely stretched when filling the entire screen. The streams are broadcast at a resolution of 1,280-by-720 (720p), which is about 3 times the resolution of the Webcam in previous MacBook Pro models. Video chatting with the Facetime app, over a Wi-Fi connection, was free of distortions. The MacBook Pro 15-inch (Thunderbolt) isn't the only laptop with an HD Webcam, though. You can find one in the Dell XPS 15, which has a Skype-certified HD Webcam. Lenovo, Sony, and HP have also rolled out laptops with 720p-capable HD Webcams.

Every other port and slot remains untouched from the previous iteration. It has two USB ports, FireWire 800, a Gigabit Ethernet port, and SDXC media card slot. The dual-layer DVD burner will seem generic compared with the Blu-Ray drives found in the Dell XPS 15 and HP Pavilion dv7-4283cl ($999.99 list, 4 stars). And don't expect to see a Blu-ray drive in a Mac laptop anytime soon, as this is a road Apple so far refuses to take. This configuration ships with a 750GB hard drive that spins at 5400rpm; the Dell XPS 15 and HP dv7-4283cl come with faster 7200rpm drives. The MacBook Pro 15-inch (Thunderbolt) offers SSD drives as well, in 128GB ($100), 256GB ($500), and 512GB ($1,100) capacities.

Massive Component Overhaul
Apple MacBook Pro 15-inch (Thunderbolt) With Intel's second-generation Core architecture, this isn't a mere brain transplant where you swap out one processor for another—it's a multi-organ makeover. For the first time in MacBook Pro history, the MacBook Pro 15-inch (Thunderbolt) is equipped with a quad-core processor—a 2.2GHz, Intel Core i7-2720QM (past models had dual-core processors). The two extra cores play a vital role in multithreaded tasks, such as those found in professional video and photo editing packages (think Final Cut Pro and Adobe Products). A revamped architecture also means faster memory speeds (up to 1333MHz), although capacities are still 4GB to start, 8GB ($200) maximum.

On our PCMark Vantage test—a gauge of overall performance—the MacBook Pro 15-inch scored 8,315 (under Windows 7 Home Premium via Bootcamp), outpacing the Asus N53SV-A1 (7,257), which has a second-generation 2GHz Intel Core i7 2630QM CPU and 4GB of memory (stay tuned for our review).. The MacBook Pro 15-inch (Thunderbolt) finished Handbrake, a single-threaded video transcoding test, in 1 minute 53 seconds, well ahead of the Asus N53SV-A1 (2:06). It crushed the previous Apple MacBook Pro 15-inch (Core i5), particularly in Cinebench 11.5 (5.07) and Handbrake (1:53) tests where the gains were doubled. It wouldn't even be fair to compare the MacBook Pro 15-inch (Thunderbolt) to the Dell XPS 15, Asus N53JF-XE1, and HP dv7-4283cl, since the other three are running previous-generation Intel parts. Suffice it to say, it was a massacre, but I suppose being first with new technologies on our labs bench has its advantages.

One of the more unexpected changes lies in the graphics. Apple has long been an Nvidia proponent on the laptop side, although it has used ATI (now AMD) graphics chips in the past. But the company believes that the AMD Radeon 6750M is a better 3D chip, and the performance numbers bear that out. This is the first time a MacBook Pro has broken the 10,000 point mark in 3DMark06 (it scored 10,878), edging the Asus N53SV-A1 (10,073) and its Nvidia GeForce GT 540M GPU. The MacBook Pro15-inch (Thunderbolt) blew past the Dell XPS 15 (8,174) and HP dv7-4283cl (4,723) in the same test, although the Dell XPS 15 is being updated with a new Nvidia chip as we speak. At high-quality settings, popular game titles like Crysis (18.8 frames per second) and Lost Planet 2 (30.8 fps) were absolutely playable, as I found out by running them in Windows 7, via Bootcamp.

Apple also found a way to link its Automatic Graphics Switching (AGS) technology with the AMD graphics chip, whereas Windows-based laptops are still performing the switch manually through software. The switch, like the previous iteration, is done automatically by recognizing which apps or tasks require a heavy-duty graphics chip. So plugging in an external display, running 3D games, or transcoding an HD video defaults to the AMD Radeon 6750M, while basic tasks (e-mail, Web browsing, etc) defaults to the integrated Intel HD 3000 graphics. Apple will also let you to force the laptop to run on the AMD graphics, done through system preferences.

Although the size of the battery didn't change and the internals aren't any more energy efficient than the previous platform, the MacBook 15-inch (Thunderbolt) improved its battery score on MobileMark 2007 (run in Windows via Bootcamp) to 4 hours 40 minutes (from 3 hours, 21 minutes in the previous version). It goes without saying that power management and battery optimizations are better tuned in the Mac OS 10 environment than in Windows7, which is why I also looped a MP4 movie file in OS 10 until the battery died. The 15-inch lasted 6 hours 43 minutes in this test. Whether it's in Windows 7 or Mac OS 10, it outlasted the Dell XPS 15 (3:48 on MobileMark 2007) and Asus N53JF-XE1 (3:15).

Final Thoughts
Now, I realize that it's still early in the game, as scores of laptops will eventually arrive on my bench with Intel's second-generation chips and with graphics chips as powerful as the ones found in Apple's new laptops. As it stands, however, the Apple MacBook Pro 15-inch (Thunderbolt) is the fastest and fastest shipping laptop to date (you can stroll into Apple store and buy one as we speak), and it's all thanks to an Intel chipset glitch that prevented every other manufacturer from shipping their new laptops on time. Apple has assured me that this glitch will not affect any of the MacBook Pros, since they're all using new and unaffected chipsets from Intel.

As for the new Intel architecture, this happens once every year, if not longer, and Apple made the most of it. The speeds clocked from our full range of performance tests were mind-blowingly fast, as were the graphics frame rates that came from a renewed partnership with AMD. Although Thunderbolt is still very early in its third-party support stages, it's a hot new technology that Apple wrestled away from everyone else. Add the Facetime HD Webcam and the Apple MacBook Pro 15-inch (Thunderbolt) is a technological tour de force.