The notebooks in the roundup all fall into the desktop-replacement category, which means they're big and heavy. Portability isn't their forte. They're more at home sitting on a desk and not on the tray table on a plane. Being a notebook obviously means being portable, and the two main considerations here are size and battery life.

We tested battery life using BapCo's MobileMark 2002 and playing the almost three-hour "Saving Private Ryan" DVD.

Notebook	Weight	Dimensions (W by D by H, in inches)	BapCo MobileMark 2002	DVD playback
Alienware Area-51m	9 pounds	13.8 by 11.4 by 1.6	2:21	1:55
Dell Inspiron XPS	9 pounds	14.1 by 10.8 by 2	2:06	1:40
Hypersonic Aviator GX6	9.6 pounds	13 by 11.4 by 1.7	1:09	0:52
Voodoo Envy m:855	8 pounds	13 by 11 by 1.7	3:49	2:23

The Hypersonic Aviator GX6 couldn't complete the MobileMark test suite, so we hand-timed it to see how far it got. The GX6 showed dismal results with just over an hour of battery life. With DVD playback the GX6 barely gets you into the story before running out of juice.

By far, Voodoo's Envy m:855 dominated our portability tests. That's in part because AMD's Athlon 64 processor throttles up or down while running on battery power, meaning you'll sacrifice peak performance to get optimal battery life. The competition maintains full speed while running on battery power. At full throttle, the m:855's battery life drops to two hours and 14 minutes.