Other pages in the review
The portability of notebook computers is a wonderful thing. To be able to continue working while away from the office certainly improves productivity but there are disadvantages when comparing a notebook with a desktop machine. In particular, having to disconnect and reconnect all the cables when leaving and returning to work.
At the very least you may need to reconnect power, network and mouse, and you might also like to use an external monitor, keyboard, speakers and camera at your desk—your notebook won’t always have enough ports to suit your needs. The solution to this problem is a docking station or port replicator.
Ports and Docking
Properly speaking, there are two classes of device: port-replicator and docking-station. The former is, essentially, an adaptor device endowed with a variety of ports which can improve (or simply replicate) a notebook’s connectivity to peripheral devices. A full docking-station has the functionality of a port-replicator, but also includes expansion slots and or optical drives. In practice, most notebooks these days have card readers and optical drives on board, thus making true docking stations somewhat irrelevant. The machines we reviewed certainly fall into this category and only one was supplied with a true docking station. As a result, the term “docking station” (or simply dock) often includes port replicators; for the sake of simplicity we will use the terms interchangeably (as commonly occurs).
The dock has a single, specialised port connecting to the notebook itself. (Be aware that not all notebooks are intended for use with these devices and lack the relevant port.) The notebook generally slots into the docking station and automatically locks in place. A button or latch then releases the notebook again. This single action negates the need for several separate items to be plugged in, thus saving time and confusion when leaving from, and returning to, the office.
The single action may be complicated if it is difficult to align the notebook or considerable force is required to lock it in place. One docking station used by staff here at the Enex Testlab has every type of port and card reader one could want, but unfortunately the user has to fiddle around each morning lining up the cable with the back of the notebook—an operation which has not become any less irritating after six months.
USB docks are also available, but these don’t have the bandwidth to compete with standard docking so they have not been included in this review. The port must be able to handle networking, video and all other inputs and outputs and this is a serious strain on a single USB port—you can forget about Gigabit Internet through a USB device.
The dock may increase the number of available USB and PS2 ports and provide DVI or S-video monitor access. Most port-replicators will also have a parallel port since these are lacking from most notebook computers. The port replicators that we reviewed all had a power switch which can be used in place of the main switch on the notebook itself.
Given the diverse range of devices and services that can be linked to a computer, manufacturers strive to put as many ports and card readers as they can into their machines (varying, of course, to allow for a variety of budgets). The majority of modern peripherals are content with USB or Firewire, but allowances must be made for older equipment—thus the presence of serial and parallel ports. External monitor support also needs to be flexible, thus a VGA port might be supplemented by S-video and or DVI.
Processors
Most of the laptops in this review possess dual-core processors; that is, the CPU chip contains two complete processors in one physical component. Packing in extra processing cores is not the only strategy being adopted by chip manufacturers; there is also a push to reduce power consumption. There are two advantages to this; first and most obvious is that notebook battery life improves, and second, less heat is generated which allows the machine to work efficiently without the need for massive cooling systems. An Intel ULV Core-Solo chip uses only 5.5W (as opposed to 31W for the standard Centrino Duo processors). This was installed in all but one of the machines featured in this review. The standard Duo processor uses 31W as does the AMD Turion used by the remaining notebook. Low voltage (LV) and ultra-low voltage (ULV) chips are also available. The ULV chips come in a 9W Duo form and a 5.5W Solo form. Low voltage Duos expend 15W. Generally, lower power processors have lower clock speeds. Lower clock speeds are also associated with dual-core processors—which obviously gain back speed in comparison to single-core chips by doing two
operations simultaneously.
Having two or more processors allows the computer to multitask more effectively. Rather than the operating system allotting alternating time slots for use by two separate applications, each application can be assigned a separate processor. Processors may also take advantage of hyper-threading technology which runs two separate tasks through a single processor to minimize the processor’s idle time. These systems do require that both the operating system and applications are able to take advantage of the available hardware.