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Mainstream<br />
Four laptops aim for the sweet spot between performance and price.<br />
Be warned: Loading up on extra features can empty your wallet. —C.N.<br />
Laptops<br />
Fujitsu LifeBook E8410<br />
$1,849 • shopfujitsu.com<br />
Fujitsu is known for affordable, reasonable performers,<br />
and the E8410 didn’t disappoint. Sure, the 100-GB hard<br />
drive is a bit scrawny and gaming performance isn’t<br />
fast, but the LifeBook is a fine all-around workhorse.<br />
It’s also your only choice for legacy connections:<br />
Dinosaurs with dot-matrix printers and 300-baud<br />
modems will love the parallel and serial ports.<br />
WIRED Fairly priced. Spacious keyboard. Top-notch<br />
performance using general apps. Four USB ports.<br />
Modular optical bay allows for easy upgrades.<br />
TIRED Lack of status light indicators (there’s only<br />
a <strong>sm</strong>all LCD panel) means you can’t quickly see if the<br />
laptop’s on. Uninspired design. Ho-hum battery life.<br />
HP Pavilion dv6500t<br />
$1,443 • hp.com<br />
HP’s Pavilion dv line has always been geared toward<br />
portable entertainment, and the latest model is no<br />
exception, with a big screen, loud Altec-Lansing<br />
speakers, and a marathon-grade battery that played<br />
video for three solid hours. A bank of touch buttons<br />
instantly accesses movies, music, and photos.<br />
WIRED Bright, gorgeous screen. Handy button<br />
for disabling touchpad. LightScribe DVD burns<br />
designs on tops of discs.<br />
TIRED Pop-out remote stowed in ExpressCard slot<br />
is hard to extract. Ginormous battery weighs down<br />
machine. Semi-disappointing performance, the worst we<br />
tested in this category; came in next to last for gaming.<br />
Apple MacBook Pro<br />
$1,999 • apple.com<br />
While all eyes were on iPhone, Apple<br />
quietly gave its flagship notebook<br />
some decent upgrades. New LED<br />
backlighting does away with<br />
fluorescent bulbs and mercury while<br />
noticeably increasing brightness.<br />
The machine also powered to lofty<br />
benchmarks all around, thanks to an<br />
updated CPU and chipset, and a<br />
switch from ATI graphics to Nvidia.<br />
Running Vista through Boot Camp,<br />
the Pro was best-in-class at gaming.<br />
WIRED Same sexy design as<br />
last year and yet 0.2 pound lighter.<br />
Very bright LED screen requires<br />
zero warm-up, hitting full wattage<br />
instantly with no hot spots.<br />
TIRED Still lacks memory card<br />
reader and wireless WAN option.<br />
Apple claims an extra hour of<br />
battery life over last year’s model;<br />
we got eight minutes.<br />
Lenovo ThinkPad R61<br />
$1,695 • lenovo.com<br />
The R61 is the chunky cousin of the ultraslim<br />
ThinkPad X61 in every sense: thicker, heavier, and<br />
less refined. It’s also more powerful and a few hundred<br />
bucks cheaper. Though designed for business,<br />
the R61 likes to play, too, with a built-in webcam<br />
and enough dexterity to run Quake 4 solidly.<br />
WIRED Impressive nongaming performance,<br />
vanquishing its peers in our benchmarks by as much<br />
as 26 percent. Top-notch keyboard. Convenient<br />
FireWire jack on front edge.<br />
TIRED Dimmest screen in the group. Feels a<br />
little bulky. Very loud fan drowns out DVD audio.<br />
Limited, two-hour battery life.
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