Fujitsu includes a 1.6GHz Atom Z530 CPU, 1GB of RAM, and a 120GB hard drive--not bad, in theory. But then Windows Vista Home Premium climbs aboard, and the U820 shudders. If you're doing a bit of light Web browsing or word processing, it's fine. Toss in a bit of heavy lifting (say, playing anything more complex than a YouTube clip), however, and you can almost hear the poor thing gasp. It earned a mark of just 24 on WorldBench 6. Here's a machine that really could have benefited from running Windows XP (like almost every netbook with an Atom processor) or more RAM. Fujitsu(Fujitsu LifeBook S2000 battery) offers this notebook with XP--your better bet. On the bright side, the U820 lasted just over 7 hours in our battery-life tests.
Considering the Death Star size of some desktop replacements, you'll find a wide variety of CPUs inside. Eurocom's D901C Phantom-X, for example, sports a 3GHz Xeon Quad Core X3370 (the kind of chip you'd normally find in a server), while Asus's W90 packs a 2.8GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T9600 CPU, which offers good--if not great--performance.
As you read, keep in mind that the machine I'm describing doesn't fit in the mainstream 15-inch PC notebook class, a strictly two-year service group typified by painted-on key legends, breakable tray-loading DVD drives, Toshiba PA3480U-1BRS battery,and slow integrated graphics. The MacBook Pro is a five-year machine, by design and by track record. If you choose to replace a 15-inch MacBook Pro in two years, you'll be able to sell it for most of what you paid for it.
I will say, though, that I like how this machine stows the DVD-RW optical drive under the right side of the wrist rest. When the drive isn't in use, the system automatically powers it down; but flick the toggle, Dell Inspiron 6400 battery,and the lid pops open. You drop the disc in at a slight angle (a switch from older ToughBooks), and that angle makes removing the disc later a whole lot easier, too.
The 13-in. MacBook Pro is the spiritual successor to the 12-in. PowerBook G4, which was discontinued three years ago when the company moved to Intel processors. The 12-in. PowerBook had a devoted following, and Mac fans decried its loss long after it was dropped. Although the 13-in. model is obviously a bit bigger because of the larger screen, it's close enough that fans of the smaller PowerBook should be satisfied -- at least until Apple( 17-inch PowerBook G4 battery) offers up something like a netbook (if it ever moves in that direction).
And for a multimedia machine with a dedicated GPU, the graphics option also underwhelmed. In Unreal Tournament 3, it posted 27 frames per second at a 1024-by-768 resolution, and it didn't manage much in Quake Wars: Enemy Territory, either (17 fps). With Half Life 2,Dell Vostro 1500 battery, the A355D posted unsteady frame rates in the high teens along with long load times, and the game's most recent installment, Episode 2, was more or less unplayable even at low settings.
