One PC With Everything--To Go!

Can your ideal notebook do everything your desktop PC can? Is it every bit as fast as a desktop? Does it offer a roomy screen and keyboard, and all the same connections, slots, and drives? If you squint, can you picture your clunky, aging desktop on the recycling heap?

Stop fantasizing already. In reality, the perfect desktop replacement notebook might be out there waiting for you right now. More than ever, desktop replacements--some with fast desktop CPUs, wide-aspect screens, generous hard drives, and rewritable DVD drives--have the power and features to replace the desktop PC in your office or home.

To see what today's desktop replacement notebooks have to offer, we rounded up six disparate models for comparison. Each had a top-of-the-line CPU, at least a 15-inch screen, and at least a 40GB hard drive. Not all desktop replacements are created equal, however, so we carefully tested performance and battery life in our Test Center and compared features before choosing an overall winner.

Our collection consisted of Acer's portable, midweight TravelMate 655LCi; Alienware's Area-51m for gamers; Apple's PowerBook G4, with its exceptional 17-inch wide-aspect screen; Dell's Inspiron 8500, packing a 15.4-inch wide-aspect screen; Gateway's large, business-savvy 600X; and Toshiba's attractive, blue-lidded Satellite 2455-S305.

No single notebook here is the ideal desktop replacement for everyone. We loved the Dell Inspiron 8500's wide-aspect screen (with a 16:9 aspect ratio), which made it the best in the group for viewing spreadsheets and DVD movies. Unfortunately, its flimsy-feeling keyboard turned us off. The 6.6-pound Acer TravelMate is the lightest (without a power adapter), but its keyboard is too small for intensive typing. The Gateway 600X's dual internal bays offer the best expansion options, but it's heavy at almost 9 pounds, not including its power adapter. Apple's PowerBook G4 has a big, beautiful 17-inch screen and loads of cutting-edge features, but it's pricey, and its keyboard took some getting used to.

Toshiba's Satellite 2455-S305 came closest to desktop replacement perfection. Though far more expensive than most comparably equipped desktop PCs, at $1899 it was the lowest priced notebook in our group. Besides posting a very good PC WorldBench 4 score and being easy to type on, it's stylish. And like the Apple, Dell, and Gateway, it comes with a rewritable DVD drive.

Finally, we say pass on the Area-51m. It's expensive, weighs too much at 9.7 pounds, and isn't even the best game player in the group. That honor goes to the Dell Inspiron 8500, which delivered faster frame rates in our graphics tests and has a nicer screen.

Life With a Desktop Replacement

Though desktop PCs continue to have lower prices and better expansion options than notebooks, about 20 percent of today's notebook buyers are ditching their desktop PCs altogether, according to Jon Peddie of Jon Peddie Research, a graphics and multimedia consulting firm. Increasingly, home users--who currently purchase 60 percent of all notebooks--are responding to the latest multimedia advances in portables, Peddie says.

Desktop replacement models that cater to multimedia fans--and to business professionals looking for desktop-level power--are expensive: Prices can reach $3000, or even higher.

For prospective buyers seeking a desktop replacement at a desktop price, Elitegroup Computer Systems of Taipei, Taiwan, introduced a product last year that it calls a "desknote." These systems look like notebooks, with built-in keyboards and screens, but run on desktop CPUs and use AC plugs or external battery packs. Because desknotes have fewer miniaturized components, they cost about the same as a low-end desktop PC and monitor, approximately $800.

Despite being somewhat popular in Asia, however, desknotes haven't yet taken off in the United States. In this country, most buyers looking for a desktop replacement still prefer portables that have internal batteries, which allow easy use during travel.

Speed Dream

Most desktop replacements use mobile processors--chips designed specifically for notebooks, such as Intel's Pentium 4-M line. But an increasing number of vendors seeking a competitive edge are putting desktop processors in their high-end offerings.

What can you expect from a chip-pumped desktop replacement? It depends on how the notebook maker accommodates the hotter-running desktop chip. Some desktop chipa??equipped portables provide a performance boost and maintain adequate battery life. Others might be susceptible to overheating, and some burn through batteries too fast.

The two best performers in our roundup use desktop chips. The Alienware Area-51m comes with a 3.06-GHz Pentium 4 CPU and a hefty 1GB of RAM. Its processor is the same top-of-the-line CPU that the latest desktop PCs use. It earned a PC WorldBench 4 score of 120, almost matched by the 2.4-GHz Pentium 4a??equipped Toshiba Satellite 2455-S305, which scored 117. (Because the Apple uses the Macintosh OS, we couldn't run our performance tests on it. In informal tests, basic applications ran smoothly.)

The Area-51m's score is 12 percent lower than the mark posted by the fastest desktop PC we've tested so far, the Sys Technology Performance 3000+ equipped with a 2.167-GHz Athlon XP 3000+ CPU. But on average, the two notebooks that used desktop chips outpaced the three Pentium 4-Ma??based models in our roundup by 11 percent. The three others used mobile 2.4-GHz/1.2-GHz Speed-Step processors and earned an average score of 106.

A downside: The Area-51m took a huge hit in battery life because of its desktop processor. In our tests we had to prop up the notebook to ensure that its air vents, located on the bottom, did their job of cooling the machine, which tended to run hot. It lasted just over an hour on a charge--the worst battery life we've ever seen for a full-featured notebook. Evidently, the Area-51m was designed primarily to be transported from place to place and then plugged in, not used in transit.

The Toshiba Satellite 2455-S305 was faster than average and won the battery life contest in this roundup at 3.1 hours. These results underscore a central truth about desktop replacements' staying power: Though many of them come with higher-capacity batteries than average notebooks, desktop replacements demand more power, which balances out to merely average battery life.

If the desktop Pentium processor draws power the way a Humvee guzzles gas, the Pentium 4-M that most large notebooks use today is a Camry. Even more promisingly, Intel's new Pentium M mobile chip sips power like a Geo Metro--we've recorded a battery life of up to 7 hours in one test--without sacrificing a lot of performance. The Pentium M processor is being introduced in lighter-weight notebook PCs first, however.

You Can't Have Everything

Until component manufacturers figure out a way to superminiaturize bays, drives, and other features, even desktop replacement notebooks will lack some of the expansion options that desktop PCs have. You won't find PCI slots for upgrading your system with more drives. Instead of having three FireWire ports, you can expect to get one.

On the other hand, desktop replacements, the zaftig beauties of the notebook world, are large enough to offer leading-edge portable technology--and that comes pretty close to the desktop experience. Take the keyboards. They don't match the quality of an external desktop keyboard--because the 3mm keystroke doesn't feel as deep as 3.5mm, and because notebook keyboards lack separate numerical keypads. But the best-designed notebook keyboards can be almost as comfortable.

In this group, the Satellite 2455-S305 and the Area-51m did the best job of mimicking desktop keyboards, right down to placing the keyboard at a slight slant. We liked the Gateway's keyboard almost as much, but its touchpad buttons are slightly undersize. Dell's Inspiron 8500 offers an elegantly designed pair of pointing devices (eraserhead and touchpad), but the keyboard flexed exasperatingly when we typed on it. The Acer TravelMate 655LCi's curved keyboard was the hardest to adapt to. We also had trouble getting used to the Apple's keyboard. Despite the 17-inch PowerBook's big size (15.4 by 10.2 inches), the small, cramped keyboard was crammed up near the screen. A slightly larger keyboard would make the Apple easier to use.

All six notebooks come with at least a 15-inch-diagonal screen, which supplies nearly as much viewable area as a 17-inch CRT. The Gateway includes a 15.7-inch display, and the Dell has a stunning 15.4-inch, wide-aspect display with a 1680 by 1050 native resolution. The Apple's beautiful, bright 17-inch-wide screen, however, with a native resolution of 1440 by 900, makes the other laptops' screens look puny.

Most of our contenders offer a variety of ports, including FireWire and several USB ports. The Apple even has a faster FireWire 800 port, a notebook first. But portables shed older features faster than desktop PCs do: None of our notebooks come with an internal floppy drive; and the Toshiba lacks a parallel port--still a standard on desktops.

Among the notebooks we examined, three--the Acer, Dell, and Gateway--allow you to attach port replicators. These devices let you connect desktop peripherals such as a printer to your notebook--and disconnect them when you're ready to go--in one step.

Five of the six notebooks (all except the Apple) carry at least one removable optical drive. The Apple, Dell, Gateway, and Toshiba units came with rewritable DVD drives, just like desktops.

With two modular bays, the Gateway comes closest to providing the same amount of flexibility as a desktop PC: It can hold two optical drives, two batteries at once, or an extra hard drive.

Despite being the lightest of the bunch, the little Acer TravelMate offers the widest variety of flash-memory options, thanks to a four-in-one reader. The card reader accepts Memory Stick, MultiMediaCard, Secure Digital, and SmartMedia cards. In addition, the TravelMate includes a Smart Card reader for security. The Apple distinguishes itself from the rest by including a DVI-out port, which you can use to drive a second analog or digital display.

The Upgrade Option

The smaller, integrated design of notebooks makes some parts harder to upgrade than their counterparts on desktop PCs. All of our roundup units except the Apple have accessible memory slots and hard drives. Other components, however, such as the graphics processor and CPU, present you with the usual notebook upgrade path: Buy a new notebook. But that may change soon.

For instance, within the next year notebook vendors will begin installing modular graphics cards that users can upgrade themselves--an industry first for portables.

As for sound, prepare to shell out a few bucks for an external set of speakers for any of these desktop replacements, except possibly the Toshiba, which uses built-in Harman/Kardon speakers. None of the notebooks delivered particularly rich sound. The Toshiba's speakers should satisfy nonaudiophile listeners.

These days, you can get generous helpings of one or two cutting-edge features in even a $1000 notebook. Say you want a 15-inch screen--some value notebook is sure to have it. But if you want a portable that delivers as much of the desktop experience as possible, you have to look at desktop replacements.

Who needs one? These portable dreamboats are for mobile users whose work requirements or comfort demand that their notebook come as close to a traditional desktop PC as possible. Database and spreadsheet crunchers, graphic artists, and (increasingly) gamers should consider a desktop replacement. And if you've been dreaming of one for yourself and have the cash--why not?