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COPYRIGHT 2003 Consumers Union of the United States, Inc.
You can buy a powerful desktop computer for as little as $600. So it may seem surprising that a growing number of computer buyers--20 percent in 2002 compared with 10 percent three years ago--favor laptops, though they cost hundreds more.
Take a closer look at the latest laptops, however, and you can see why a laptop may be worth considering as your next computer. With a screen only a bit smaller than that of a desktop computer, a processor that's about as powerful, and greater flexibility than the laptops sold just a couple of years ago, today's version gives you nearly everything you'd get with a desktop computer.
True, a desktop computer is far easier to upgrade than a laptop when your needs change. It has more connections for external devices and room for add-in adapters, and you can soup it up with off-the-shelf parts from your local computer store. Most of what's inside a laptop is proprietary and pricey. Desktops can also accommodate huge hard drives--up to 180 gigabytes (GB)--for video editing, say. The largest that comes with a laptop is 60 GB.
But throw in the ability to move about the house or to stow the computer nearly anywhere, and a laptop can easily be worth its price premium.
We tested eight Windows-based laptops from major manufacturers and an Apple iBook, all configured for a typical home user who may travel occasionally, but is more likely to be typing in the den than en route to Denmark.
DESIGN POINTS THAT COUNT
You can find no-frills notebooks for as little as $700. Their screens and drives will likely be smallish, and their processors, not the swiftest. They won't be able to "burn" CDs. For a bigger screen plus the power to handle virtually any computing need, expect to spend $1,500 to $2,000.
At one design extreme, laptops have the battery and all the drives permanently built in. At the other extreme, the skinniest and lightest laptops do away with all internal drives except for the hard disk. If you need to access a CD or diskette, you must hook up an external drive. Typically, however, laptops have one or two modular bays for swapping drives or taking an extra battery or a second drive. Most of the laptops in the Ratings are of modular design and weigh 7 to 8 pounds.
To keep the laptops we bought comparable for testing, we configured their key components as follows:
Display. When possible, we chose a 15-inch, whose viewable image is 12 percent smaller than a 17-inch CRT monitor's but suitable for most uses.
Processor, hard drive, memory. We chose 1.8- or 2-GHz Pentium 4-class processors for Windows laptops and an 800-MHz Power PC G3 processor for the iBook. We also opted for a 30- or 40-GB hard drive and enough memory (256 or 512 megabytes) to run typical application software on a par with desktop machines.
Drive. We chose a "combo" DVD/ CD-RW drive,...
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