Two of the five new notebooks we tested this month earned a fifth-place ranking--one on each side of our split chart. At the time of our evaluation, Windows Vista was not yet available, but all five laptops we tried are ready to be upgraded to the new OS.
Among the desktop replacements, Fujitsu's LifeBook N6420 has the same 2-GHz Core 2 Duo T7200 CPU as the reigning Best Buy, HP's Pavilion dv9000t, but it carries only 1GB of DDR2-667 SDRAM versus the HP notebook's 2GB. Though the N6420 produced a respectable WorldBench 5 score of 104, it turned in poor battery life.
On the all-purpose list, the Sony VAIO VGN-N170G performed worse than most current chart contenders. But at $1100, this stylish laptop is reasonably priced.