The Dell Latitude X1 is £400 cheaper than the Portege R200 for roughly the same parts. It includes an external CD-RW/DVD-ROM drive and higher WXGA (1,280x800) screen resolution, but a slower 1.1GHz ULV Pentium M processor. The ThinkPad X41 includes a dock with a CD-RW/DVD-ROM drive and a faster 1.5GHz Pentium M, though a smaller 40GB hard drive, for around £400 more than the Portege R200. In a market segment distorted by the hop across the Atlantic, the Dell is by far the winner in value terms for British ultra-thin laptop buyers.
Performance
In our mobile benchmarks, the Portege R200 performed about 11 per cent slower than both the Latitude X1 and the ThinkPad X41. However, frequent fliers who use the Portege R200 for typical low-intensity travellers' tasks -- document editing, emailing, Web surfing -- will find it fast enough. In our drain tests, the Portege R200's battery lasted a long 4 hours, 5 minutes compared to the Latitude X1's smaller cell, which cut out after 3 hours, 2 minutes. The ThinkPad X41, which carries the biggest battery of them all, hung on for an especially impressive 5 hours, 26 minutes.
(Longer bars indicate better performance)
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BAPCo's MobileMark 2002 performance rating |
(Longer bars indicate better performance)
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BAPCo's MobileMark 2002 battery-life minutes |
System configurations:
Dell Latitude X1
Windows XP Professional; 1.1GHz Intel Pentium M 733; 512MB DDR SDRAM 400MHz; Intel 915GM/GMS 910GML Express 128MB; Toshiba MK6006GAH 60GB 4,200rpm
IBM ThinkPad X41
Windows XP Professional; 1.5GHz Intel Pentium M 715; 512MB DDR2 SDRAM; Intel 915GM/GMS 910GML Express 128MB; Hitachi Travelstar C4K60 40GB 4,200rpm
Toshiba Portege R200
Windows XP Professional; 1.2GHz Intel Pentium M 753; 512MB DDR2 SDRAM; Intel 915GM/GMS 910GML Express 128MB; Toshiba MK6006GAH 60GB 4,200rpm
Edited by Michelle Thatcher
Additional editing by Nick Hide
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