Digit 2005-04 - Clevernotions.com

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labs Sony Vaio FS195XP format 15-inch conventional price £1,344 plus VAT company Sony, www.sony.co.uk contact Sony, 08705 111 999 digit rating The Vaio FS195XP is Sony’s take on Apple’s new 15-inch PowerBook. Although stylish, Vaios used to come in two varieties: large, heavy, and powerful; or small, light, and a bit weak. The FS195XP isn’t quite as diddy as the PowerBook or as stylish as the 17-inch Vaio (right), but it’s an all-round performer let down by some graphical corner cutting. Based on Intel’s Sonoma platform, the FS195XP has some powerful technologies behind the rather bland specs. 512MB of RAM is right for the price, though the 1GB limit is crap. It’s DDR2 memory, which gives this Vaio a slight advantage in RAM-hungry tools such as Photoshop. The 1.73GHz Pentium M processor is faster than the 1.67GHz Power PC G4 processor found in the PowerBook. More importantly, you have the option to spend more and get a processor up to 2.13GHz in speed, which you don’t with the PowerBook. What will attract most users, though, is the X-black screen – though this is no longer only available on Sony laptops and monitors. Unfortunately, the screen is powered by an NVidia GeForce Go 3200 graphics processor, which only has 16MB or 32MB of graphics RAM (Sony couldn’t say which). The 128MB quoted figure is found by adding this to the amount of normal RAM that the graphics chip can use – dropping the available power overall. This leaves this Vaio lagging behind other PC laptops in the 3D stakes, but still ahead of the 15-inch PowerBook. This Vaio lacks the PowerBook’s scrolling trackpad, Sudden Motion Sensor, and Bluetooth 2.0 – though none of these are essential. Testing procedures The laptops were benchmarked for 2D graphics and rendering performance. All tests were performed three times directly from start-up and an average taken. Video-manipulation performance was tested using Adobe After Effects and Discreet Combustion. Photoshop This test performs 20 actions upon a 200MB image, within Photoshop CS with Version Cue running. Results are in seconds and smaller bars are better. 106 d Sony Vaio A397XP format 17-inch conventional price £1,899 plus VAT company Sony, www.sony.co.uk contact Sony, 08705 111 999 digit rating ★★★★★ ★★★★★ The Vaio A397XP is an absolute corker. It offers the best balance of power and mobility for the creative designer – and looks great to boot. It’s as if the AJP or Alienware units had been on a serious diet, making it thin and light enough to use on the move and powerful enough to use as your central design, editing, or animation machine. The outside looks great, but it’s the screen that really shines. Combining Sony’s X-black technology with a high-definition 1,920-x-1,200 resolution matrix, it’s the best laptop screen we’ve ever seen. Images in Photoshop are extremely detailed and colourful, and the screen offers spacious layouts within usually cluttered video editing and 3D applications. Even at this resolution, the ATI X600 chip keeps 3D graphics running smoothly and generating a decent Cinebench score – helped along by the fast 2GHz processor and 1GB of DDR2 memory. Results in Photoshop were less impressive, though perfectly adequate. We could see that redrawing the huge resolution was slowing down image processing, which the swift time in LightWave backed up. However, the small delay is worthwhile. Only the two huge Pentium 4-based units were more powerful than the A397XP, and their size and weight puts them in a different category of device entirely. Also adding points to the A397XP’s score was a responsive trackpad, which was the correct shape – unlike some of the other widescreen laptops, and a comfortably large keyboard. This Vaio matched its much bigger brothers for sound quality from its little speakers, and the dual-layer Sony DW-D56A DVD±RW drive. A definite winner. Cinebench Cinebench 2003 simulates scenes from within Maxon Cinema 4D. Scores given are the OpenGL HW-L result. This is an indication of the frame-rate and 3D power of the host machine, placing particular stress on the graphics card. The test passes the position of light sources and geometry to the graphics card, which processes them using OpenGL. Results are in Cinebench’s proprietary units, and longer bars are better. products at a glance MANUFACTURER AJP MODEL D900T PRICE PLUS VAT £1,399 DIGIT RATING OS Windows XP Home CPU Pentium 4 540 (3.2GHz) RAM (STANDARD/MAX) 1GB/2GB FRONT SIDE BUS 800MHz SCREEN 17-inch ASPECT RATIO Widescreen RESOLUTION 1,680-x-1,050 GRAPHICS CARD NVidia GeForce Go 6800 GRAPHICS RAM 256MB HARD DISK 80GB OPTICAL DRIVE DVD±RW (dual layer) MEDIA CARD SLOTS CF, SM, SD, MS INPUT DEVICE Trackpad DIMENSIONS (W-X-D-X-H) 397-x-298-x-50mm WEIGHT INCLUDING BATTERY 5.2kg BATTERY LIFE 1 hour ETHERNET Gigabit WIRELESS CONNECTION 802.11b/g/Bluetooth/IR PORTS 4x USB 2.0, 2x FireWire, DVI, S-Video, composite video, PCMCIA, keyboard/ mouse, parallel, serial, modem Rendering ★★★★ ★ This uses the Tracer – Radiosity.lws file, included with LightWave 7.5c, with the resolution multiplier raised to 50 per cent (from 25 per cent) to test the response to very complex scenes and long-term stability. The Image Viewer FP was turned on. Rendering was performed using two threads per Hyper-Threaded or 64-bit processor and one thread per processor for other chips. Results are in minutes and seconds, and shorter bars are better.
ALIENWARE APPLE DELL EVESHAM HP SONY SONY MJ-12M 7700 POWERBOOK G4 15-INCH LATITUDE D610 VOYAGER XT NW8000 VAIO FS195XP VAIO A397XP £1,928 £1,343.83 £799 £976.85 £2,399 £1,344 £1,899 ★★★★★ Windows XP Professional Mac OS X 10.3 Windows XP Professional Windows XP Home Windows XP Professional Windows XP Professional Windows XP Professional Pentium 4 550 (3.4GHz) PowerPC G4 1.67GHz Pentium M 730 (1.6GHz) Pentium M 745 (1.8GHz) Pentium M 755 (2GHz) Pentium M 740 (1.73GHz) Pentium M 760 (2GHz) 1GB/2GB 512MB/2GB 512MB/2GB 512MB/1GB 1GB/2GB 512MB/1GB 512MB/1GB 800MHz 167MHz 533MHz 400MHz 400MHz 533MHz 533MHz 17-inch 15-inch 14.1-inch 15-inch 15-inch 15.4-inch 17-inch Widescreen Widescreen Conventional Conventional Conventional Widescreen Widescreen 1,680-x-1,050 1,280-x-854 1.024-x-768 1,400-x-1,050 1,600-x-1,200 1,280-x-800 1,920-x-1,200 NVidia GeForce Go 6800 ATI Mobility Radeon 9700 integrated ATI Mobility Radeon 9700 ATI Mobility FireGL T2 NVidia GeForce Go 6200 ATI Mobility Radeon X600 256MB 64MB up to 128MB (shared) 128MB 128MB up to 128MB (shared) 128MB 120GB 100GB 40GB 80GB 60GB 100GB 80GB DVD±RW (dual layer) DVD±RW DVD/CD-RW DVD-RW/RAM DVD/CD+RW DVD±RW (dual layer) DVD±RW (dual layer) CF, SM, SD, MS None None None SD Card Memory Stick Memory Stick Trackpad Trackpad Trackpad/Pointer Trackpad Trackpad Trackpad Trackpad 397-x-298-x-50mm 348-x-241-x-28mm 312-x-262.2-x-34.3mm 326-x-258-x-25mm 326-x-275-x-41mm 364-x-265-x-25mm 406-x-280-x-42mm 5.2kg 2.5kg 2.2kg 2.9kg 2.9kg 2.9kg 3.9kg 1 hour 4.5 hours not quoted 3 hours 2 hours 2 hours 2 hours Gigabit Gigabit Gigabit 10/100Mbps Gigabit 10/100Mbps Gigabit 802.11b/g/IR 802.11b/g/Bluetooth 802.11b/g/IR 802.11b/g/IR 802.11b/g/Bluetooth/IR 802.11b/g/IR 802.11b/g/Bluetooth/IR 2.0+EDR/IR 4x USB 2.0, 2x FireWire, 2x USB 2.0, FireWire 800, 4x USB 2.0, VGA, S-Video, 2x USB 2.0, FireWire, VGA, 2x USB 2.0, FireWire, 3x USB 2.0, FireWire, VGA, 3x USB 2.0, FireWire, DVI, S-Video, composite FireWire, DVI, S-Video, PCMCIA, parallel, serial, S-Video, PCMCIA, parallel, VGA, S-Video, PCMCIA, S-Video, PCMCIA, parallel, VGA, S-Video, PCMCIA, video, PCMCIA, keyboard/ PCMCIA, modem modem modem parallel, serial, modem modem parallel, modem mouse, parallel, serial, modem “ Test results ★★★★★ ★★★ ★★ ★★★★ ★ ★★★★★ ★★★★★ ★★★★★ AJP D900T Alienware Apple PowerBook Dell Latitude Evesham HP NW8000 Sony Vaio Sony Vaio MJ-12m 7700 G4 15-inch D610 Voyager XT FS195XP A397XP LightWave 39m 49s 37m 21s 64m 24s 66m 5s 58m 35s 56m 19s 61m 21s 53m 11s Photoshop 8m 53s 6m 47s 11m 52s 14m 20s 10m 19s 6m 53s 11m 17s 10m 46s Cinebench (CB) 2627 2588 806 624 2311 2643 1816 2289 d 107
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