Its lovable chiclet-style keyboard is taken from its award-winning netbook line, and came closer to a perfect typing experience than the MacBook Pro 13-inch and Asus U41JF-A1. It’s also backlit, a feature that comes in extremely handy in poorly-lit areas. The touchpad and mouse button combo, however, was unresponsive at times, like that of the HP 14-1210NR. Toshiba was better off with dedicated mouse buttons.

The E305′s features match up well with those of the best all-purpose laptops. Complementing the two standard USB 2.0 ports is a single USB 3.0 port, which remains powered while the unit’s asleep so you can charge phones (for example). You may also play music through an external MP3 player connected to the input jack while the unit is asleep. WiDi lets you route the E305′s video output (but not HDCP content) to an external display via a wireless adapter. The unit supports HDMI and VGA output, too, if you don’t want to spring for the adapter.

Connectivity is a rare combination of older 10/100 ethernet and dual-band 2.4GHz and 5GHz wireless. One very rare feature is the integrated WiMax–a wireless broadband service available in many metro areas. The E305 was set up for the Clear network, but it failed to connect in my testing.

The E350 ships with the usual array of software and utilities: Microsoft Office Starter 2010, a trial version of Norton Internet Security, the aforementioned WinDVD, and a Best Buy app. Toshiba supplies a fair number of branding apps and utilities as well, but you can save some memory and CPU cycles by reverting to the Windows Home 7 Premium utilities where possible. Intel’s MyWiFi utility allows you to use the E305 as a hotspot.

A big 67WH battery is the second largest battery among the QX411-W01 (60WH), MacBook Pro 13-inch (63.5WH), and HP 14-1210NR (59WH). Thus, its 6 hours 28 minutes battery score was more than satisfactory. Based on specs and speed, except for the 10/100 ethernet, the Satellite E305-S1900X is a killer all-purpose laptop. Ergonomically, it’s not quite a slam dunk, though, so make sure you give it a thorough type-and-point test at the store before you buy.

The G53SW has an average amount of ports for a 15.6-inch notebook; a larger variety would be appreciated. It lacks an ExpressCard slot and eSATA. The right side of the G53SW houses a USB 2.0 port, a USB 3.0 port, Ethernet, a HDMI port, a VGA port, headphone and mic jacks, and the power jack. Two USB 2.0 ports and a DVD burner line the left side of the laptop, and the front lip contains a 5-in-1 card reader.

This “Chiclet” or island-style keyboard has raised flat-topped keys. It features white backlighting, which is great for using the notebook in a darker environment. The keyboard has a very light feel and it is easy to press down the keys. The tactile feedback is adequate however could be significantly improved if the keys had a longer throw.

The touchpad is oversized and has an excellent matte/non-stick surface. It supports multi-touch features such as ‘pinching’ to zoom. The touchpad buttons need serious work, however; they are difficult to press depending on where pressure is applied on the button. Additionally, they are loud and take too much pressure to press.

The 15.6-inch glossy display on G53SW offers full 1920 x 1080 HD resolution. We appreciated the deep blue in Captain America’s uniform and the rich red in his shield while watching a trailer for Captain America: The First Avenger. The colors popped even more we when switched to Vivid mode. The speakers located above the G53SW’s keyboard provided rich and clear audio. Sound during our gaming sessions was equally impressive. The EAX and THX surround audio enhancements made the sound more immersive, heightening our gaming experience.

Powered by the 2nd generation Intel Core i7-2630QM quad-core processor, experience top-of-the-line adaptable speed and responsiveness for the most demanding tasks. Featuring the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460M graphics engine that comes with a massive 1.5GB of GDDR5 VRAM, the ROG G53Sw-A1 leads in DirectX 11 gaming for advanced tessellation and faster graphics rendering. And while others struggle to find the keys in dimly lit areas, the backlit gaming keyboard gives you the edge in the dark to put you ahead of the competition. The ROG G53Sw-A1 showcases a stealth fighter-inspired design with a unique thermal design that promotes airflow and keeps air away from you.

Good battery life is not expected out of a gaming notebook for obvious reasons; high-performance components  consume more power than typical parts. Despite this, the G53SW managed a respectable 3 hours, 11 minutes during our standard battery rundown test  (Windows 7 Balanced power profile, 70% screen brightness, wireless active, and refreshing a web page every 60 seconds).

The $1,449 ASUS G53SW-A1 offers a great combination of blazing-fast graphics, a gorgeous display, and rich audio. Our biggest issue is the keyboard, which not only has an undersized number bad but exhibits a lot of flex. You also have to think about the weight: 8.2 pounds is a lot to carry for a 15.6-inch notebook, especially when the 17-inch version of this ASUS laptop (the G73SW-A1) weighs just about half a pound more.

Not much has changed in the way of materials and durability, the X1 does get a facelift in the form of a chiclet (and backlit!) spill-resistant keyboard, coupled with a buttonless touchpad. Rest assured, though: Lenovo hasn’t mucked with the secret sauce that makes its keys so comfy to type on. And while you might feel ambivalent about Lenovo once again going with an integrated touchpad, know that this is one of the better ones we’ve tested. The textured pad feels wonderful and makes a satisfying low-pitched sound when you press it.

The ThinkPad X1 features a unique port layout as a result of the thin side profile which is just 16.5mm. You’ll see a headset jack and USB port on one side of the X1, a media card slot on the other, and the rear of the laptop is packed with more ports than you’ll find on any other ultra-thin notebook.

The 13.3-inch screen on the ThinkPad X1 is a HD (1366 x 768 resolution) screen with a “Super Bright” backlight rated at 350 nits. The panel is extremely glossy but that is in no small part due to the addition of Corning Gorilla Glass which protects the screen from scratches and damage that would break a typical notebook screen.

With its 2.5-GHz second-generation Intel Core i5-2520M CPU, Intel integrated graphics, and a 7,200-rpm hard drive, the ThinkPad X1 offers strong enough performance to take on even the most daunting productivity tasks. On PCMark Vantage, a synthetic benchmark that measures overall system performance, the X1 scored a whopping 7,535, about 80 percent above the ultraportable notebook category average of 4,185 and well above the Core i5-2537M powered Samsung Series 9 (6857), the Core i5-2410M powered Toshiba Portege R835 (6115), and the 13-inch MacBook Air (5,390) and its older Core 2 Duo CPU.

Noise levels were mostly a non-issue with the X1 as long as you weren’t seriously stressing the system. During the 3DMark benchmark tests we noticed the system fan was loud enough to be mildly disruptive in a quiet office or classroom setting. The best way I can describe it is the fan sounds like someone is using a hairdryer somewhere on the second floor of a two-story house. You’ll notice the fan noise when you’re stressing the graphics but it isn’t as loud as what we hear on gaming notebooks with discrete graphics cards.

The ThinkPad X1 with Intel Core i5-2520M processor delivered 5 hours and 51 minutes of battery life with the built-in battery. If you need more than 8 hours of endurance, you can always buy a second slice and swap them, but there’s no way to replace the internal battery. Fortunately, the internal battery is rated to last at least 1,000 charge cycles (three years) before it might start to lose capacity.

The ultimate businesss ultraportable, the ThinkPad X1 combines the best notebook typing experience ever with strong performance, a sleek design, great sound, and durability. However, the notebook isn’t perfect. Business users who require more endurance will want to consider the Lenovo ThinkPad X220, which includes a nine-cell battery for $125 less.

This notebook was built by the best quality of the Aspire 7740. It is above average with a solid body that does not have much flex. Its screen cover provides decent impact protection for the LCD and does not allow the screen to be distorted unless firmly pressed from the back side. Besides, the glossy paint on the screen lid resists light scratches and seems to hold up under normal daily abuse from carrying it around. Acer Aspire 7740’s palmrest and keyboard trim resist smudging and managed to stay clean throughout most of the review period.

This serial of Aspire also uses a floating island-style keyboard that is comfortable to type on but causes a few hang-ups when trying to type quickly. Since this keyboard does not have an internal bezel structure or solid key design, we can hit the top of another key easily when you finger is fully pressing a neighboring key and trying to slide over at the same time. The keyboard layout also takes advantage of the chassis and offers a four-key wide number pad with room to spare on each side.

This notebook’s selection is average for a 17-inch notebook with VGA and HDMI-out. There are four USB ports, audio input and output jacks including S/PDIF out, LAN, modem, and a Kensington lock slot.  We can also find eSATA for faster external storage expansion, but it was probably left out to keep the price low. We will be impressed that a Blu-ray drive was included, but its decoding software was absent. The blu-ray decoding software may cost as much as $99. It is with one example being PowerDVD 10 from CyberLink.

The display of the system is 1024 x 600 pixels of native resolution, which is rather standard for the 10-inch netbooks, though some high-end premium Netbooks comes with 1366 x 768 pixels of native resolution displays. The ports and connections on Mini 210-1199DX are rather identical to what we’d seen in most of the Netbooks, though, it continues HP’s trend of replacing the headphone/mic jacks with a single audio common audio connection. The Power button for HP Mini 210 can be a tad hard to locate as it’s the slider switch of the HP and is nestled between the USB ports on the right edge and the SD card slot.

The Mini 210′s 7,200rpm hard drive runs faster most Netbooks or even midsize laptops, which use 5,400rpm drives. However, its speed did not help it perform better in our benchmark tests compared with the other Netbooks in our retail roundup, all of which have Intel’s N450 Atom processor, 1GB of RAM, and Windows 7 Starter Edition. The Mini 210′s performance was comparable to pretty much any similarly configured Netbook from 2010, which means it’s fine for basic Web surfing and e-mail, and even light multimedia playback, but if you get too ambitious, you’ll be staring at the spinning Windows wait icon most of the time.

With six-cell battery and Intel’s power-saving Atom CPU, the system ran for 5 hours and 6 minutes on our video playback battery drain test. That’s an excellent score, but it is well within what we’d expect from a current Netbook and at least an hour or so less the category leaders. It’s more than enough for a full day of on-the-go computing, but keep in mind that the large battery sticks out from the rear of the body.

The HP Mini 210-1199DX has one of the finest touchpad and keyboard combination we’ve seen till date, on a It has one of the best keyboard and touch pad combos we’ve seen on a 10 inch Netbook, but HP’s pink-hued Mini 210 is still a tad pricey for what it offers.

The embedded ATIRadeon HD 6250 graphics lets the Eee PC users to enjoy multimedia to the fullest. DirectX 11 supported gaming and multimedia experiences, make it a completely new world for the users. The netbook comes with an HDMI video output port to give a full 1080p HD picture quality and playback on an even bigger screen. This is a feature which is not part and parcel of most 10.1 inch netbooks. All you need to do is connect the netbook to a home theatre and enjoy full HD content. And of course it is coupled with HD sound for a complete viewing experience.

The Super Hybrid Engine Technology of ASUS gets coupled with AMD’s Fusion APU and it’s signature low energy consumption makes it possible for users to use the notebook anywhere they want for a longer time than a regular battery life allows. The ASUS Eee PC battery life is 8.5 hours, which makes sure that the user does not run out of netbook battery and that it keeps running through the day’s work and entertainment.

Prices start at $289.00 however for $373 (total) you can get a 1 year extended warranty. You can go over different price options on ExcaliberPC, remember like most netbooks there is no CD/DVD drive therefore you may want to check out the bundle which includes an external optical drive.

The plastic construction of the A665 is very good with a durable main chassis that doesn’t squeak, creak, or flex even under significant pressure. The textured chain pattern gives you the modern look of the glossy plastics but doesn’t look like a horrible magnet for smudges, dirt, or whatever a family member spills on the laptop. The bottom of the notebook includes two access plates for the RAM and the hard drive. Despite the fact that most consumers buying this type of general purpose or light multimedia notebook don’t perform upgrades, Toshiba engineers made is very easy to get inside this laptop.

The Satellite A665 S5176′s style keyboard is nice and wide, with plenty of room between the square keys. You’ll also find a full size numeric keypad on the right side. Key travel is good, but the space bar is small and the keys’ smooth surface is a bit slippery. Below the A665′s keyboard is a large 3.7 x 2-inch touchpad, which we found to be responsive when moving the cursor.

Toshiba Satellite A665-S5176 15.6-inch display has a standard 1366 x 768 resolution and a widescreen 16:9 aspect ratio. However, considering the notebook comes with a Blu-ray player, you may want to output video via HDMI to take full advantage of those movies’ 1080p resolution. Colors were bright enough and pretty well saturated, though hues looked a bit washed out. As with other second-gen Intel Core notebooks, the A665 also features Intel’s WiDi technology, which lets you wirelessly stream unprotected high-def content to a TV, provided you purchase a Netgear’s Push2TV 2000 receiver ($92).

The Satellite A665-S5176 has two USB ports, headphone and microphone jacks, plus a combo Blu-ray/DVD SuperMulti Drive on its right side. The left side of the notebook holds another USB port, a high-speed USB 3.0 port that charges devices even in sleep mode, Ethernet, and HDMI and VGA video outputs. Sitting on the front lip is an 8-in-1 memory card reader. As a special touch, the notebook’s speakers can be used by other audio devices when connected to the headphone jack, even when the computer is asleep.

The Satellite A665-S5176 is currently offered via Adorama and On Sale and includes the Core i3-2310M 2.1GHz dual-core CPU at 2.1GHz. Unlike its higher-end “Sandy Bridge” Core i5 and i7 counterparts, the i3-2310M doesn’t support Intel TurbooBoost performance boosting technology. The laptop runs on integrated Intel HD graphics and features 1366×768 screen resolution, 4GB of RAM, a 500GB hard drive, Blu-ray combo drive, Windows 7 Home Premium OS, and Toshiba’s Fusion X2 Finish.

In the “balanced” power mode with 75% screen brightness, the Satellite A665-S5176 lasted for three hours and 56 minutes of non-stop use with wireless active and refreshing a page every 60 seconds. This is pretty good for a notebook with a stock 6-cell battery. However, it’s worth mentioning that the Satellite A665-S6089 from last year delivered four hours and 12 minutes of battery life.

My only complaints about this notebook are pretty minor. For starters, there aren’t too many reasons to buy this notebook if you purchased the A665 last year. That’s good for current A665 owners because it means that last year’s laptop isn’t obsolete, but it means that consumers will be alright if they buy an older configuration of the A665 that is on sale. I’m extremely glad that Toshiba added a USB 3.0 port to the  A665-S5176, but if you are someone who uses the ExpressCard slot then you’re out of luck. Although I’d like to see Toshiba improve the durability of the screen lid the new Satellite A665 still offers a great value for people shopping for a 15-inch multimedia laptop.

HP Mini 1103 features the following specs:

• Windows 7 Starter (32-bit)
• Intel Atom N455 processor (1.66GHz)
• 1GB DDR3 RAM
• 250GB hard drive (7200rpm)
• 10.1-inch diagonal LED-backlit WSVGA anti-glare (1024 x 600)
• Intel HD integrated graphics
• Broadcom 802.11a/b/g/n and Bluetooth 3.0
• 4-in-1 media card slot
• Dimensions: 10.55 in (L) x 7.52 in (W) x 0.9-1.15 in (H)
• Weight: 2.78 lb with 3-cell battery (not including weight of AC adapter).
• Power: 6-cell 55Wh Lithium-Ion battery
• Warranty: One-year standard warranty

The HP Mini 1103 features a 93% full-size keyboard that is a hybrid of a traditional keyboard and a modern “Chiclet” style keyboard. Each key features a raised platform shape that mimics the feel of extra space between the keys similar to a Chiclet keyboard. The touchpad on the Mini 1103 is a Synaptics ClickPad with multitouch support and two traditional touchpad buttons.

The six-cell battery on the Mini 1103 lasted for 8 hours and 27 minutes, about 2 hours above the netbook average. This machine beats out the HP Mini 100e and Samsung NF310 (both 6:32), the Toshiba Mini NB255 (6:41) and the Samsung N150 Plus (7:12) and comes in just a few minutes behind the ASUS Eee PC 1001P (8:40).

The Ralink RT3090 wireless radio delivered strong throughput at 15 feet from our router (35.8 Mbps) but at 50 feet the signal dropped to just 12.4 Mbps. The latter score is well below the netbook average (18.5) and behind the Mini 100e (17.9). This issue may not not be a problem so long as the router is nearby.

HP bundles the Mini 1103 with a good assortment of useful software. You’ll find HP’s Support Assistant and the Wireless Assistant, plus the QuickWeb in-stant-on environment. The company includes some security features as well, including a Power-On password option and support for Computrace LoJack Pro for HP ProtectTools.

This netbook holds its own against the ASUS Eee PC 1001P, which beats the HP in the style department but lags slightly behind in most performance tests. Educational institutions and indi-vidual students looking for maximum value will find much to like in the HP Mini 1103.

The Envy 14 is solid to the bone – seriously, the build quality is fairly remarkable for the price and even better, it’s not all that heavy for a 14.5-inch machine. At 5.2-pounds, it’s .4 pounds lighter than both the MacBook Pro and HP Pavilion dv5. The 1.09-inch thick system does have room for some added ports as well – it’s got two USB ports, an eSATA / USB combo port, HDMI, DisplayPort, Ethernet, and two headphone jacks, one of which double as a mic jack as well. It’s still peeving that there’s no VGA port, but you can pick up an HDMI to VGA cord from HP for $50, or from Amazon for around $20. A two-in-one card reader dwells on the front lip of that laptop, while the left side makes room for a slot-loading optical drive.

The HP ENVY has a Chiclet-style keyboard with backlit illumination for typing in poorly lit areas. The keyboard was very comfortable to type on with a layout that was far from being cramped. The backlight feature worked very well in dark rooms, turning on and off at the push of a button. Under normal conditions the high-contrast keys were easy to read, with a black background and bright white lettering. Individual key actions were smooth, with very little sound given off while typing at a moderate speed. The ENVY 14 features a large Synaptics touchpad with integrated left and right buttons.

The HP ENVY 14 has a 14.5-inch all-glass display that is unique to this particular notebook. The 14.5-inch screen size has a higher than average HD+ (1600×900) resolution but a smaller footprint that helps to bridge the gap between 13.3/14-inch and larger 15.6/16-inch notebooks. The screen features higher than average contrast and very high color saturation. We measured an average contrast ratio of 938:1 with our Gossen Mavo Light Meter. Black levels were excellent, measuring a low 0.25cd/m2 in the center and a peak of 275cd/m2. Colors seemed to have a slight red-cast which was only noticed when viewing an all-white screen when browsing the web or typing documents.

Port selection on the HP ENVY 14 is excellent, even with the rear of the notebook being reserved for the screen hinge only. The system has two USB 2.0 ports, an eSATA/USB combo port, a headphone and headset jack, mini-DisplayPort-out, HDMI-out, Ethernet, and a SDHC-card slot. USB 3.0 would have been handy given the increase in compatible accessories these days, but with eSATA having higher speeds, it wasn’t missed really on this system.

The Envy 14 is just as strong internally: our review unit was powered by a 2.66GHz Intel Core i5-450M processor, 4GB of DDR3 RAM and a 500GB 7,200rpm hard drive. It was also coupled with an ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5650 GPU with 1GB of VRAM. ATI’s Radeon HD 5650 also topped a lot of the other laptops on 3DMark06. With its 1GB of VRAM, it pushed along a 1080p clip beautifully – though Intel’s integrated solution is more than capable of dealing with HD content. The graphics performance is pretty good for a mid-range card .

Speaking of the battery, the Envy 14′s 3800mAh eight-cell battery lasted three hours and 51 minutes on our video rundown test, which loops the same standard definition video at 65 brightness. For a laptop of this size, that’s not bad by any standard, and when writing this review and surfing the web (listening to Pandora and checking e-mail, really) got about four and a half hours or runtime. HP does offer an extra battery slice for a whopping $200, which attaches to the bottom of the laptop.

The HP ENVY 14 is a very fun wolf in sheep’s clothing notebook. From the outside it looks like just your average notebook, taking design queues from the unibody MacBook, but on the inside its packed with a very capable processor and high-end ATI dedicated graphics. At the time of writing this review the ENVY 14 comes standard with the Intel Core i3 370M dual-core processor with the quad-core Intel Core i7 840M as the highest option.

Design

The MSI GT660 series was designed in partnership with Dynaudio to create a gaming notebook chassis that also offers a “true-to-life sound experience.” The speaker housing structures, speaker circuits and overall position of the stereo speakers and subwoofer were designed to combine the extreme performance of a gaming notebook with the rich audio performance of a premium multimedia notebook.

Despite the heavy use of plastics, the exterior surfaces of the GT660R are covered in a scratch-resistant coating to improve durability. The screen lid itself is also covered in “MSI Color Film Print Technology” which is essentially in multi-layer printed image imbedded into the plastic. In this case you can see a faint honeycomb pattern in the lid similar to the texture used on the palm rests when you open the notebook.

Keyboard and Touchpad

The Chiclet-style keyboard on the GT660R offers a reasonably enjoyable typing experience and is also fine for hours of gameplay. Individual keys are a little mushy and the center of the keyboard flexes inward under heavy typing pressure, but the individual key action still delivers acceptable feedback when pressed. The typical gaming keys of W,A,S,D feature special red paint to help you quickly identify where your fingers need to be during a game (just in case you didn’t already know). Each key is flat with a nice matte texture and a little extra spacing to prevent typos. A backlit keyboard would have been far more useful than lights next to the touchpad or under the edges of the palm rests.

The touchpad itself offers a quality interface with a lightly textured surface and excellent responsiveness. The touchpad itself feels just the right size for the notebook: any smaller and it would have been too small and any larger would have made this notebook even bigger than it already is. The touchpad drivers provide excellent accuracy and minimal lag with a range of options. The touchpad buttons are hidden under a single “rocker bar” and have a shallow press with audible “click” when pressed.

Performance

Starting with an Intel Core i7-740QM processor running at 1.73GHz and the Nvidia GeForce GTX 285M with 1GB of GDDR3 dedicated memory, this system easily ranks among the best gaming notebooks you can buy for less than $2,000. As impressive as that might sound, MSI wasn’t going to stop there.

The GT660 series features a complete system overclocking feature called TDE+ which overclocks the CPU and the GPU simultaneously at the touch of a button. MSI claims this “Turbo mode” provides a “16% performance boost” but our own lab testing shows the exact percentage of improvement varies greatly depending on a variety of factors.

Since this is intended to serve as a gaming machine, it’s important to point out that different games will react differently to the CPU+GPU overclocking feature on this notebook. In most cases, such as when we tested Left 4 Dead, Left 4 Dead 2, Shattered Horizon and Resident Evil 5, there was an obvious increase in the frame rates while gaming at the native screen resolution with detail settings maxed out. The bottom line is that the overclocking feature offers some added value for serious gamers but it isn’t a magic bullet for all your gaming needs.

Battery Life

Let’s be perfectly honest: No one buys a high-performance gaming notebook and expects it to deliver great battery life. Between the high-performance CPU, the high performance graphics, the dual storage drives and the giant cooling fans, there is simply a ton of hardware to keep running on a battery. In the “balanced” power mode with 75% screen brightness, the MSI GT660 lasted for two hours and 31 minutes of non-stop use while surfing the Internet and using a word processor. This is pretty pathetic for a general use laptop, but since many gaming laptops deliver less than one hour of battery life we can’t complain too much. You can also extend the battery life by dropping the screen brightness to the lowest useful setting.

Conclusion

The MSI GT660R is an impressive-looking gaming notebook with solid performance, great speakers and the ability to easily overclock the CPU and GPU at the touch of a button. The variety of ports including USB 3.0, the ability to upgrade to 12GB of RAM and the super-fast 1TB of storage make this an attractive choice for gamers looking for a strong system for $1,700 or less.

The weak battery and the thick and heavy chassis are par for the course when it comes to large gaming notebooks, but some consumers might not like the glossy plastics and the fact that the screen resolution is just 1366×768.

Design
At 13.3 x 9 x 1.4 inches and 5 pounds, the Toshiba Satellite M645 is light enough to carry in your bag. Given its short battery life (see below), however, plan on carrying its 0.7-pound power brick anywhere and everywhere you take it. The black chassis has a classy, understated aesthetic. The lid and deck are covered in Toshiba’s Fusion X2, a textured matte finish which looks up close like a tiny series of chains and doesn’t pick up fingerprints at all. The grain felt comfortable under our wrists as we typed and made a pleasant record-scratching sound when we ran our nails across it. The light-gray Fusion X2 finish on the touchpad, island-style keyboard, and touch-sensitive control bar all contribute to the handsome look.

Keyboard & Touchpad
The full-size keyboard with LED backlighting on the M645 features Chiclet-style keys that are responsive and provide a little extra spacing to prevent typos. The keys are large and flat and have a glossy texture that shows smudges from your skin oils over time. There is no noticeable flex unless you apply significant pressure to the keys in the middle of the board. A individual key presses are quiet with virtually no “click-clack” noise while typing; making it an excellent choice for taking notes in a classroom or office meeting room. The keyboard also features dedicated multimedia keys above the keyboard and dedicated home, end, page up and page down keys.

The Synaptics touchpad is a fairly nice with a matte texture that provides smooth cursor movement. The touchpad drivers provide excellent accuracy and minimal lag with a range of options. This is a multi-touch touchpad with customizable gestures and overall this touchpad works exactly like you want a touchpad to work. However, the touchpad buttons have very shallow feedback with moderately loud clicks when you press the buttons.

Port
The standard notebook assembly of m645 includes a DVD- drive, which can be updated to Blu-ray. We note the presence of wiFi module, gigabit ethernet port and possibility of wiMAX installation. The cost of base configuration will be $730.

Display and Sound
The Satellite M645′s 14-inch, 1366×768 display provided sharp images and bright colors when viewed head on. However, because its surface is so glossy, images washed out significantly at even 30 degrees to the right or left of center. And if you’re not using full brightness, there’s a good chance you’ll see your own face or the room behind you reflected in the panel.

That said, the Satellite M645 provided smooth, sharp, and noise-free playback of every video we threw at it, from a 1080p WMV file from Microsoft’s HD Showcase to a 720p episode of Fringe we streamed from Fox.com to a DVD of Dark City we played in Toshiba’s upscaling DVD software. In all cases, even dark areas that frequently show pixilation were smooth and colors were bright without looking oversaturated.

With its Harmon / Kardon speakers (powered by Dolby Advanced Audio) prominently mounted above the keyboard, the Satellite M645 produced the best audio we’ve ever heard from a mainstream notebook. When listening to a live version of the Jimi Hendrix classic “Machine Gun,” we could hear a clear separation between the drums coming from one speaker and the guitar from the other, giving us the illusion that we were sitting in the front row of a concert. This sound separation was even more apparent when we listened to the jazz standard “Morning Dance” by Spyro Gyra, which includes many more instruments. At maximum volume, the sound wasn’t overpowering but was loud enough to fill a medium-size room. Best of all, there was not even a hint of the distortion or tininess we normally experience on notebook speakers.

Performance
The Toshiba Satellite M640/M645 offers solid overall performance thanks to the combination of its Core i5 processor, 4GB of RAM, and Nvidia graphics. The Intel Core i5 450Mprocessor is one of the nicer Core i5 processors currently on the market and provides a nice little boost over other 14-inch laptops equipped with slower Core i3 and i5 processors. Honestly, the Toshiba Satellite M645 is one of the best performing 14-inch notebooks we’ve reviewed.

The Nvidia GeForce 330M graphics are similar to the discrete graphics found in the popular Alienware M11x, so the Satellite M645 is a perfectly capable gaming machine. Well, with a few minor annoyances. First, the slow hard drive that I previously mentioned adds several lengthy delays during level and map load times in games. Second, in-game frame rates were sometimes a little slower when playing games like Mass Effect 2 and Dragon Age: Origins … but the difference was only a few frames per second. Since the Toshiba has a faster CPU, I can only assume that the marginally worse gaming performance is due to the slow drive and the lack of gaming optimization found in Alienware notebooks.

Regardless, the Satellite M645 can still handle most modern games at the native 1366×768 screen resolution and thanks to Nvidia Optimus technology this notebook automatically switches between the Intel integrated graphics (for extended battery life) and the Nvidia dedicated graphics (for better video and gaming performance). You don’t have to worry about pressing any extra buttons to get the best out of this laptop.

Design

Measuring 1.3 inches thick and weighing 3.8 pounds, the black VAIO Y is made for travel. It’s also made to last. Sony decked out the top and bottom of the chassis in magnesium, giving the notebook a nice rigidity; twisting the machine in our hands with the lid closed resulted in zero flex. The competing ASUS UL30A has a light silver brushed aluminum lid, but the deck is plastic. The HP Pavilion dm3 has aluminum on both the lid and deck, which gives it more of a consumer feel. Some may feel the VAIO Y looks too much the part of a business machine, but we like its fit and finish. Other elegant details on the VAIO Y include a textured grid pattern on the deck, which has a nice feel. Like other Sony notebooks, this one sports circular hinges; the right side houses the power button, and the left has the power jack. Above the keyboard is a speaker strip and two buttons: VAIO and Assist. The VAIO button launches VAIO Media Gallery software, while the Assist button pulls up VAIO Care for quick access to support and troubleshooting options.

Keyboard and Touchpad

The VAIO Y has a comfortable Chiclet-style keyboard that is easy to type on for long periods of time. Compared to the Vaio Z the spacing is a bit different, putting dedicated Page Up/Down and Home/End keys on the right side of the keyboard, instead of including them as secondary functions over the direction keys. This caused some shrinking of the right shift button and left control button as well as slightly tighter spacing. The keyboard also lacks one of the luxurious backlit keys seen on the VAIO Z, but that was expected given the much lower starting price. Keyboard support is excellent with no noticeable keyboard flex under strong typing pressure. Key responsiveness is great as well as very quiet key actions that don’t emit much noise when fully pressed.

The touchpad on the VAIO Y is a Synaptics model that is very responsive and has no discernible lag. The touchpad includes some multitouch features, including two-finger scroll which the Z actually skipped in favor of the chiral-scrolling motion. Refresh rates were excellent, preventing any “trails” from the cursor drawing fast circles on the screen. The touchpad settings out of the box were near perfect, with no tweaks needed during the review. I also found the touchpad buttons to be easy to trigger with the edge of your thumb and had shallow feedback when fully pressed. Overall the touchpad was very good and one of the nicer models seen on a thin and light notebook.

Ports and Webcam

There are few surprises when it comes to the port selection on the VAIO Y. Like most ULV notebooks, this one lacks a DVD drive, so looks elsewhere if that’s and important feature to you. The left side houses the power jack, VGA port, HDMI, one USB 2.0, a FireWire port, and headphone and microphone jacks. The Ethernet ports, two more USB 2.0 ports, and an ExpressCard/34 slot line the right side. Up front you’ll find separate Memory Stick and SD Card slots.

Display

The Sony VAIO Y comes standard with a 13.3-inch WXGA panel with no upgrade options for higher resolutions. Compared to other CULV-based notebooks the screen rates above average with good color and contrast. I have to admit that this screen was a step down from the one seen on the VAIO Z, which had a higher color saturation and deeper black levels (at nearly triple the cost!). For users looking to enjoy a movie on the road, enjoy a YouTube clip during class or type a term paper during a study session the screen is perfect. Backlight levels were good for bright indoor viewing conditions, with the surface measuring 196nit at full brightness. Viewing angles were good, although colors did seem to have a narrow sweet spot of roughly 10-15 degrees before colors started to shift or invert vertically. Horizontal viewing angles were much better, spanning over 60 degrees from the side.

Battery

Much like the ThinkPad Edge 13″, the VAIO Y doesn’t live up to the lofty claims by Sony in terms of battery life; it’s not even close. Sony claims that you can get up to 8 hours of life from a single standard battery. We got just over 3. Of course, our test represents expected life while you’re actually working, but even if we would’ve left the machine idle for long stretches, we can’t imagine that 3 hours ever stretching to 8. It may get 4 or 5 hours if you play your cards right, but 8 seems overly optimistic. Overall, 3 hours of life while working isn’t bad for a standard cell in a CULV machine, but Sony’s claims make it more difficult accept the 3 hours. We honestly expected to get somewhere close to 8 hours, and as you can see, we were let down in a big way.

Performance

Like many other ultraportables in this price range, the VAIO Y features Intel’s 1.3-GHz Core 2 Duo SU7300 processor. This dual-core CPU, along with 4GB of RAM combined to offer snappy performance. The system scored 2,906 in PCMark Vantage; that showing is above the ultraportable category average (2,739), much better than the ASUS UL30A (2,442), and slightly higher than the HP Pavilion dm3 (2,874). The VAIO Y also beats the Intel version of the Toshiba Satellite T135 (2,701). Anecdotally, the VAIO Y proved to be a good performer; we noticed only a bit of lag when we tried to zoom in on our Manhattan office while we had Pandora streaming in the background, and most applications opened quickly.

Design
The design of the HP Pavilion dv5t is simply beautiful. It is sleek and ultramodern, with tasteful accents. The entire notebook is streamlined, and no matter what angle you look at it, it looks great. This notebook has a “soft” design with all corners rounded off. Looking at the side of the notebook, the backside is a semicircle, and the front curves up like the bow of a boat. When the display is shut, the back of the notebook has a raked look to it, which is appealing. The display only has one large hinge, which adds to the sleek look. The chassis is relatively thin, at 1.37 – 1.65 inches thick.

Keyboard and Touchpad
The dv5t’s backlit, chiclet-style keyboard isn’t just attractive, it’s also comfortable. Resting our fingers on the soft keys felt natural, even if the right Shift key is undersized (we couldn’t tell while touch typing). Although it wasn’t distracting, we could see and feel the keyboard panel move beneath our fingers as we typed. Still, we scored a decent 81 words per minute on the Ten Thumbs Typing Test, and quickly raised our score to 88 wpm after some more hands-on time.

Touchpads have recently been HP’s Achilles’ heel, and the dv5t is no exception. When we first started using it, the surface felt smooth, and the two integrated touch buttons were easy to press. In fact, we still like the giant button and the satisfying click it makes, but the touchpad became frustrating to use. Often, we would bring the cursor close to where we wanted to click, and then it would suddenly feel sluggish, making subtle movements with the cursor take effort. The touchpad also supports multitouch gestures, although pinching two fingers to zoom is considerably easier than panning back out.

Screen
With the introduction of the HP Pavilion dv5 series notebooks, HP is finally offering high-resolution displays. The dv5t is currently offered with a WXGA or WSXGA+ resolution. The WXGA screen (1280 x 800 resolution) is what most 15.4-inch notebooks in stores have, and the most common resolution on 15.4-inch notebooks. The WSXGA+ display (1680 x 1050 resolution) is what my notebook has. It has 42% more viewable space than the WXGA display, which is the reason I chose it. Higher-resolution screens allow you to see more and scroll less. For example, if I view a large web page, I could see 42% more content on the WSXGA+ display than on the WXGA display. Another example- while viewing a high-resolution picture, I can see 42% more detail on the WSXGA+ display than on the WXGA. WSXGA+ makes it possible to use larger windows side by side; you would be hard-pressed to practically view two spreadsheets side-by-side with a WXGA display, but with the high-resolution WSXGA+, it is more than possible (you could do it without shrinking the windows too much).

HP offers two display finishes in addition to the resolutions – the standard BrightView or the BrightView Infinity. The Brightview display has the standard glossy finish that nearly all new consumer notebooks come with. The Infinity display is a new option introduced on the dv5 series notebooks. The Infinity display is basically a large piece of clear plastic over the entire display. It makes the display look like it has no borders. I have the Infinity finish on my notebook. While it makes the notebook look sleeker and more modern, it does increase the amount of reflections over a standard glossy finish. I personally do not mind the reflections. If you are used to a regular glossy display, the Infinity display is not that different in glossiness. I would choose the Infinity display again, since it makes the notebook look sleeker.

Ports and Webcam
The dv5t’s ports include three USB ports, one of which doubles as an eSATA port for high-speed transfers; HDMI and VGA output for connecting to high-def and standard-def displays; an Ethernet jack; and headphone and mic ports. It also has a 5-in-1 memory card reader. Pretty standard for a consumer notebook. The VGA webcam won’t deliver sharp photos or videos thanks to its low 640 x 480 resolution. They were brightly lit, which someone on the other end of your video calls will appreciate, but the colors were off. Specifically, there was a bluish tint across the entire picture; even our black sweater appeared navy. In general, image quality was noisy.

HP’s MediaSmart Webcam software offers an easy interface in which you can click thumbnails to review photos and videos you recently shot, as well as add fun special effects. The sound quality was also excellent: we didn’t hear any echoes, and even when we moved farther away from the notebook it was still easy to hear us.

Operating System & Software
HP offers 32- and 64-bit versions of Vista on the dv5t. Home Premium is standard, while Ultimate is available as an upgrade. I have Home Premium 32-bit on my machine. I went with 32-bit because some of the devices I use do not have 64-bit drivers. HP unfortunately pre-loads a good deal of bloatware into the factory hard drive image. Upon receiving the notebook, I immediately wiped the drive and did a clean install of Vista using orev’s excellent Clean Install Guide in the forums. This allowed me to start with a fresh install of the operating system and drivers only.

Performance
Our configuration of the dv5t had a 2.26-GHz Intel Core i5 430M CPU, 4GB of RAM, 64-bit Windows 7 Home Premium, and a 7,200-rpm, 500GB hard drive. For the most part, this combination proved powerful: the notebook scored 5,725 on PCMark Vantage (a Windows benchmark), which is 1,700 points higher than the average thin-and-light. For its specs, though, the dv5t’s performance is right on the money. The $849 Dell Studio 15, which has the same configuration save for its discrete graphics and lack of a Blu-ray drive, scored an almost identical 5,735. The $829 Samsung R580, which also has identical specs (including a Blu-ray drive) except for a slower 5,400-rpm hard drive, scored even higher (5,804).

The dv5t’s 7,200-rpm hard drive transferred a 4.97GB mixed media file at a rate of 28.8 MBps, while the average notebook in this class does so at a slower rate of 23.4 MBps (the Studio 15 managed a similar 28.3 MBps). Still, the hard drive couldn’t make the notebook boot quickly; its startup time of 1:18 seems sluggish when you consider that the average notebook this size can be up and running within 56 seconds (even the Gateway NV59C09u, which has a slower 5,400-rpm hard drive, booted in 1:03).

The dv5t didn’t hiccup when we ran a full scan using Norton Internet Security in the background while streaming music through Slacker and jumping between open tabs in IE8. As we said about HP’s new Pavilion dm4, however, sometimes this fast laptop felt slower than it should have, thanks to the dragging cursor. We also saw the spinning Windows circle a lot, even when trying such tasks as minimizing our Norton scan or ending a video capture in MediaSmart Webcam. When it came down to more intense crunching, the notebook transcoded a 114MB MPEG-4 file to AVI in 1 minute flat, just 3 seconds faster than the average thin-and-light.

Design
Unlike the U30Jc or the UL50, the lid of the N61Jv is glossy with a subtle wavy pinstripe pattern, much like the K42F. This looks cool, but it doesn’t do a great job of hiding fingerprint smudges. Inside, however, ASUS has made several interesting design changes. The palm rest is rubberized, making it very comfortable to the touch.

Above the chiclet-style keyboard is the most striking feature: a silver speaker bar perforated by tiny holes. At the right side is a circular chrome power button encircled by a backlit ring; on the other side are buttons to control multimedia playback and to launch the ExpressGate Instant-On environment. At either end of the silver bar are two translucent strips that light up blue when the notebook is on. All in all, it has a very retro-chic look, like something Braun might have designed in the 80s.

Weighing 6 pounds even, the N61J is a bit heavier than most notebooks in its class, most of which have smaller 15.6-inch screens. The Samsung R580, for example, weighs 5.6 pounds. However, the N61Jv, at 15.4 x 10.6 x 1.1—1.5 inches, cuts a thinner profile to the R580’s 16.2 x 10.7 x 1.3—1.6 inches.

Keyboard and Touchpad
The palm rest has a sort of “rubbery” textured plastic found on some mice and keyboards, along with the Alienware M17x and ASUS G73J. The technical description is a “soft touch rubberized painted plastic” surface for the palm rest; whatever it’s called, we like it, and we wish the top cover used the same material. The keyboard is of the chiclet variety and has a good feel and key action. We only have one minor complaint with the keyboard, and that’s the use of a half-size “0″ key for the number keypad. Above are two different keyboards, on the left is the ASUS N61J and on the right is the Acer Aspire 5740G; Acer gets the number keypad right. If a company is going to go to the trouble of fitting a 10-key into a notebook, they need to use the standard layout. Yes it’s a minor quibble, but it’s our only real complaint with the keyboard. We do feel there are better keyboards out there, but that’s largely a matter of personal taste—I’m partial to the Lenovo ThinkPad T410 approach, with raised and contoured keys that feel more like a desktop keyboard. If on the other hand you prefer chiclet keyboards, the N61J won’t disappoint.

Display and Audio
The 16-inch LED-backlit display on the N61Jv was plenty bright, and we liked the crisp colors. While its resolution of 1366 x 768 was adequate for a notebook at this price, its glossy surface kicked back reflections and angles were somewhat limited. Image quality was fair. While watching a 720p episode of Fringe on Fox.com, we could easily make out the wrinkles in the characters’ faces, though a DVD of Heroes looked somewhat grainy.

Despite the fact that the N61Jv has Altec Lansing Speakers and SRS Premium Sound, we were somewhat disappointed overall. There was very nice definition when listening to Led Zeppelin’s “Over the Hills and Far Away,” but bass was sadly lacking on this entertainment system. During the chorus, the higher notes drowned out the lower tones, making it sound a little harsh. Tweaking the settings using the SRS control panel did little to help. On the plus side, the volume was fairly loud when streaming Weezer’s “Beverly Hills” on Slacker.

Ports
ASUS provides a single eSATA port and two USB 2.0 ports. The big extra is that ASUS has added an NEC USB 3.0 controller for one more USB port on the left side

Performance
The 2.26-GHz Intel Core i5-430M processor and 4GB of RAM (upgradable to 8GB) powered the N61Jv to an excellent score of 5,841 in PCMark Vantage, which measures overall performance. That’s about 900 points higher than the desktop replacement average, about 40 points higher than the Samsung 15.6-inch R580, which has the same processor, and practically equal to the similarly sized Acer Aspire 5740G. The 17-inch Samsung R780 ($799) has the same processor, but scored about 100 points higher.

Not only is the N61J’s hard drive a relatively spacious 500GB, but it also zips along at 7,200 rpm, enabling it to blow past a number of notebooks in its category. We were able to duplicate a 4.97GB folder of multimedia in 2 minutes and 31 seconds, a rate of 33.7 MBps. That’s 45 seconds faster than the R580 (26.2 MBps), and more than 10 MBps faster than the Sony VAIO E (21.7 MBps). Boot time, too, was a fast 57 seconds.

Design

After churning out umpteen NV notebooks with updated specs but the same design, Gateway has re-thought this line of laptops. Following a trend set by HP and Dell, Gateway ditched its super glossy lid and instead went with a subtly patterned one whose finish has a bit too much kick to be called matte, but is still subdued enough that it’s not reflective. The result is an attractive, more understated surface that masks fingerprints. The lid and palm rest’s silver color and fine pattern of wavy lines should also prove gender-neutral.

Gone, too, are the touch-sensitive multimedia controls above the keyboard. Instead, there’s a thin chrome strip above the keys that houses LED lights for Wi-Fi and battery status, as well as a discreet power button. The multimedia keys are now baked into the top row of the keyboard, as they are on Macs. In addition to multimedia keys, there’s a dedicated button for launching Social Network Service—Gateway’s own dashboard for Facebook, Flickr, and YouTube (more on that later).

The chiclet-style keyboard—basically, Acer’s FineTip design—is new to the NV series, too, although Gateway still fits in a full number pad, something many other 15-inch systems lack. As a result, though, the touchpad is placed left of center, so that it falls in the center of the keyboard, but not the palm rest itself. The NV59C09u feels surprisingly compact at 15 x 10 x 1.3 inches and 5.4 pounds; it weighs the same as the Editors’ Choice–winning HP G62t and is lighter than the minimalist 5.6-pound 15-inch MacBook Pro and older 5.6-pound Gateway NV.

Keyboard & Touchpad

Its full size keyboard uses very large chiclet keys so that mistypes are rare. Like the R580, a full size numeric keypad lies adjacent to the keyboard—great for accountants and number crunchers. The mouse buttons aren’t completely silent, but their resistance is minimal and pleasant to use. The large, gesture-enabled touchpad responded smoothly to pinching and zooming, as well as to one-fingered scrolling. With a smooth, low-friction surface and an easy-to-press touch button to match, this redesigned NV is an improvement over its predecessors.

Display and Sound

When we watched the first Iron Man movie on Blu-ray, the picture looked bright and sharp on the 15.6-inch screen, as did a lower-resolution SNL Digital Short on Hulu. Still, the benefits of having a Blu-ray drive are mostly lost on a 1366 x 768 display. A higher resolution would have been nice, although we suppose that’s a reasonable trade-off to make in a sub-$800 machine. The speaker strip, barely noticeable above the keyboard, produced slightly metallic bass notes when we played “Telephone” by Lady Gaga and “Paint it Black” by the Rolling Stones.

Ports

With the built-in HDMI port, the NV59C09u can double as a standalone Blu-ray player—all you need is an HDMI cable and an HDTV. It has your standard connectors, such as 3 USB ports, VGA, audio jacks, and Ethernet port. A multimedia card reader (SD, xD, MS, MS Pro, MMC) can be found in the front bezel. The 320GB hard drive is in line with its peers, although the Samsung R580 also gives you 500GB of storage space and an eSATA port for expansion.

Performance

The NV59C09u’s list of specs echo what we’ve seen on lots of budget notebooks lately: a 2.13-GHz Intel Core i3-330M processor, 4GB of RAM, and a 5,400-rpm, 320GB hard drive. In general, it performs better than the average mainstream laptop. Its score of 4,846 in PCMark Vantage, for instance, falls almost 700 points above the average. Then again, the less expensive HP G62t ($599) comes with the same processor and amount of RAM, as well as a larger, faster 7,200-rpm hard drive, and it notched a much better score of 5,306. The Dell Studio 15, which packs a more powerful Core i5 processor and a 7,200-rpm hard drive, also steamrolls the NV with a score of 5,735. The Samsung R580, which has a 2.26-GHz Core i5-430 CPU and 4GB of RAM, bested them all with a score of 5,804.

The NV converted a 114MB MPEg-4 file to AVI in 1 minute and 4 seconds using Oxelon Media Converter, which is faster than average. The machine was powerful enough that we didn’t notice Norton Internet Security running in the background as we watched a Hulu clip at full screen. Meanwhile, its boot time of 1:03 is right on the money in terms of what you can expect of a notebook this size. However, its 5,400-rpm hard drive transferred a 4.97GB mixed media file in 4:51—a rate of 17.5 MBps, which is slower than the mainstream average of 22.5 MBps as well as the Samsung R580’s speed of 26.2 MBps.

A 48WH (6-cell) battery is a very common capacity for laptops in this class. Based on some of these battery scores on MobileMark 2007—the Dell 1564 finished it in 3 hours 29 minutes, the HP dv6-2150us in 3:46, and the Samsung R580 in 3:42—you wouldn’t expect anything more from the NV59C09u. It scored 3 hours 42 minutes. One notable exception is the Asus UL50VF-A1, which ships with a much bigger battery (84WH) and more energy efficient parts, and consequently, scored 8 hours in the same test.

The Gateway NV59C09u seems like a great value if you’re buying it for the Blu-ray drive alone. With any laptop, though, you’ll have to look at the entire picture. Beyond the Blu-ray drive, everything else—a low-end Core i3 processor, integrated graphics, and a plain design—is just average. Even though our Editors’ Choice, the Samsung R580 ($830) is slightly more expensive, there’s just more value.

Design
With a footprint of 10.2 x 7.0 x 1.5 inches, the U135 takes up about as much desk space as other netbooks of its ilk. However, its battery sticks out the bottom of the system, increasing its thickness in the back to 1.5 inches. While not nearly as egregious as the Wind U110, this protrusion is more noticeable than those on many other netbooks with 6-cell batteries. Weighing 2.8 pounds, the U135 disappeared like every other netbook once inside our messenger bag. When we first opened the lid of the U135, we were struck by the similariries between this system and the ASUS Eee PC 1005PE-P (Seashell), and with good reason: The two island-style keyboards are almost identical, and both have a single mouse bar as opposed to discrete buttons. While our U135 came in blue, consumers will also be able to get the netbook in silver, red, or black. The wavy line pattern on the lid is also repeated on the touchpad, which adds a nice graphical element to the design. This pattern also does a decent job of masking fingerprint smudges.

Screen and Speakers
The Wind U135 offers a 10” glossy LED-backlit display that rates below average compared to other similarly sized netbooks. On our review model we noticed significant backlight bleed around all the edges when the brightness is near the top of the scale. During the boot sequence this is especially visible when the backgrounds are black. Turning the backlight down to 50-70% reduced the bleed, but it was still slightly visible if you were in a dark room watching a movie. Color and contrast are comparable to other competing netbooks thanks to the glossy screen surface. If the backlight bleed was lessened it would be a great machine to watch movies on while traveling. At peak brightness the screen is easy to read in bright office conditions and outdoors if you are in an area that the sun wasn’t reflecting off the screen. Viewing angles are average with the vertical viewing range spanning 15-20 degrees forward or back before colors started to invert. Horizontal viewing angles are better, keeping colors looking true even at steep angles.

Speaker performance is average compared to most netbooks on the market, meaning that they lacked volume and any hint of bass compared to a full-size notebook. For most users the speakers are great if you want to watch a quick streaming video clip or listen to some music in the background, but if you intend on watching a movie, headphones are the preferred option.

Keyboard and Touchpad
I really like the chiclet-style keyboard on the MSI Wind U135. It looks much the same as the keyboard on the Asus Eee PC 1005PE, but some of the Fn keys are in different spots. You can hit the Fn key plus a number of other buttons to adjust the volume, screen brightness, toggle the wireless connections, or turn off the touchpad. Hitting FN+ F10, for example will trigger the MSI ECo software, which adjusts your computer’s settings to improve performance or battery life for different situations (such as gaming, or presentation mode).

But back to the keyboard. There is a little flex in the middle of the keyboard if you push down too hard. But honestly, that’s the sort of thing I only notice when I take the time to press on the keyboard and look at it. When I’m typing, it’s not a problem. The keys are flat, with a little space between them making them easy to detect without looking down. I took a typing test and notched a score of about 100 words per minute, which is about average for me.

The touchpad is reasonably wide for a 10 inch netbook. There’s only a single wide button below the touchpad, instead of distinct left and right buttons. While the palm rest has a glossy finish and a smooth plastic texture, the touchpad is a bit rougher, which makes it easy to slide your finger across without generating much friction. But the touchpad doesn’t seem to support scrolling — at all. Most netbooks let you scroll through documents and web sites by either placing two fingers on the touchpad and dragging or by moving your finger up and down the right edge of the touchpad. The Wind U135 I tested doesn’t seem to support either scrolling method.

Performance
Stocked with Intel’s new Atom N450 processor and 1GB of RAM, the U135 performed about the same as the ASUS 1005PE-P. The U135 scored 1,418 on PCMark05, 8 points higher than the 1005PE, but 80 points below the netbook average—which to date has been mostly Intel N270 and N280 processors. In Geekbench, the U135 scored 906, about 70 points higher than the netbook average. We were able to go about our typical netbook activities—surfing the web and watching videos—without any issues. The U135 was a bit more lethargic in the LAPTOP Transfer Test. Its 250GB, 5400-rpm hard drive copied a 4.97GB folder of multimedia in 5 minutes and 6 seconds for a rate of 16.6 MBps, which is 9.8 MBps slower than the 1005PE, but 1.3 MBps above the netbook average, It also took 1 minute and 24 seconds to boot into Windows 7 Starter Edition, almost half a minute longer than average.

Similarly, the U135, which has the new Intel GMA 3150 integrated graphics chip, was fairly average when it came to graphics tests. In 3DMark06, the U135 scored 154, nearly identical to the ASUS 1005PE (155), and a shade below the average of 160. When we transcoded a 114MB, 5-minute and 5-second MPG4 video to AVI using HandBrake, the U135 took 30 minutes and 12 seconds, half a minute longer than average. When performing the same task using Oxelon Media Converter, which takes advantage of multithreading, the Ul35 took 6 minutes and 6 seconds.

Design
For a budget system, the MSI A6200 sports a rather classy design. The glossy black lid and palm rest are adorned with subtle gray pinstripes that reminded us of an upscale business suit.  The touchpad, which sits in a concave area of the palm rest, also carries the pattern. The dek and bezel are also made from glossy black plastic, and the front lip of the system carries a tasteful array of status lights in bright blue and green. Unfortunately, all this gloss adds up to a fingerprint magnet.

At 14.7 x 9.7 x 1.2 inches and 5.4 pounds, the MSI A6200 is no ultraportable but it feels surprisingly light for a 15.6-inch notebook with an optical drive. We were able to carry both the notebook and a pile of textbooks around in our bag all day without feeling like we were lifting something heavy. That’s a bit lighter than competitors like the Gateway NV5934U (5.6 pounds) and the Toshiba L505-ES5018 (6 pounds).

Keyboard and Touchpad
Because of its screen’s wide aspect ratio, the A6200 has room for a numeric keypad and plenty of space to stretch out your hands. The island style keyboard has keys with a comfortable matte plastic surface but less tactile feedback than we’d like. On the Ten Thumbs Typing Tutor test we managed to reach 86 words per minute, far better than our usual 80 wpm rate. However, we also had a 3-percent error rate (worse than our typical 1-percent rate), because the keys didn’t snap back at us as forcefully as we like.

The indented touchpad looks very attractive and provided accurate navigation around the desktop. However, it does not support multitouch gestures such as pinch-to-zoom, a feature most modern notebooks now support. The mouse buttons are paired into a single mouse bar, which is less pleasant to click than two discrete buttons, but offers decent feedback.

Heat
During light use the A6200 stayed relatively cool, but when we played a Hulu video at full screen minutes, it got warmer. After 15 minutes of streaming video, the keyboard reached 95 degrees Fahrenheit, the touchpad heated up to 97 degrees, and the bottom warmed up to 95 degrees. We consider temperatures above 95 degrees to be uncomfortable and above 100 degrees disturbing. The Gateway NV5934u, by comparison, had a keyboard that reached 98 degrees and a bottom that measured 100 degrees.

Ports and Webcam
a6200_sh1For a budget system, the MSI A6200 does not skimp on ports. On its back side are a Kensington lock slot, a VGA-out connection, HDMI port, and two USB ports. Having those connections on the back of the notebook is a little odd, and means you have to reach around behind the system when plugging in devices. The left side contains an Ethernet port, a 4-in-1 memory card reader, audio in/out jacks, and an ExpressCard 54 slot. The right side has one more USB port, for a total of three.

The 1.3-megapixel webcam offered mediocre quality images in normal lighting conditions.  In extreme low light, we were able to get a clear, though largely colorless picture. But when we turned on a light source behind us in an otherwise dim room, the picture got worse as our face became extremely dark in comparison to the background.  When conducting a Skype call, images were sharp but a little jerky.

Performance
The MSI A6200’s 2.13-GHz Intel Core i3 M330 CPU allowed it to get reasonable performance scores that were slightly above the mainstream notebook category average and similar to those offered by other sub-$600 15 and 14-inch consumer notebooks. On PCMark Vantage, a synthetic benchmark that measures overall performance, the A6200 scored a respectable 4,191, which is more than 300 points higher than the category average and far better than the 3,531 turned in by the Toshiba Satellite L505-ES5018. The Core i3-powered Dell Inspiron 14 (4,720) and Gateway NV5934U (4,248) had slightly higher scores, while the HP G62t (5,306) did much better.