Top Notebook PCs Chart:
With their big screens, keyboards, and hard drives, desktop replacements tend to be heavier than other types of notebooks but remain portable enough for at least occasional forays outside the office. They also have the room to pack the most powerful components into their big cases.
The $2799 IBM ThinkPad T40 still stands as our pick for the best overall desktop replacement. A perennial power Best Buy on our regular Top 15 Notebook PCs chart, the ThinkPad handily earned our top choice here, too, because it has an impressive collection of components in a package you can carry through an airport without needing a wheeled cart.
Though it weighs only 5.4 pounds (without its power adapter), the T40 we tested holds just as much RAM and hard-drive capacity as a standard desktop machine does. Containing 512MB of system memory and an 80GB hard drive, the T40 also earned a very respectable PC WorldBench 4 score of 124.
For expansion, the T40's modular bay can accommodate anything from the included DVD-ROM/CD-RW combination drive to a second battery. Both long-range (802.11a/b) and short-range (Bluetooth) wireless options were built into our unit.
The $2389 Gateway 450X is somewhat heavier than the T40, but is still easy to carry at 8.1 pounds. It has more legacy connections and takes almost as many add-ins via its modular bay, among them an optional six-in-one memory card reader module. It's the first 1.7-GHz/600-MHz Pentium M-equipped notebook we've tested, and it scored 125 on our PC WorldBench 4 suite, ranking among the fastest notebooks we've seen to date. Its battery life is also excellent, at 5 hours.
The $2025 HP Compaq Business Notebook Nx7000 is the only model among the desktop replacements here that has a wide-screen display, and it also boasts the best built-in stereo sound. The unit's extrawide case gives the keyboard room for a separate cursor keypad, as well as a touchpad with a separate scroll zone. Its native resolution of 1680 by 1050 makes icons a bit tiny, but it would make a good presentation or graphics machine.
Small-business users who don't travel much could be happy with Dell's Inspiron 5150. At 8.5 pounds (10.5 pounds with the AC adapter), this heavy-duty performer also includes a DVD burner. However, Dell does not sell a docking station for this notebook.
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