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Intel Classmate PC review

7.0

Editors' Rating

Design		8.0
Features		6.0
Battery life		7.0
Performance		7.0

Dan Ackerman CNET

Published: 02 Nov 2007

Editor's Note, 4/3/2008
Since we published this review from our US CNET.com colleagues late last year, ZDNet UK has had its own Classmate units in for testing. Given this notebook's developing-world focus, we were particularly interested in the Classmate's power consumption, so we devised a simple workload test and measured the system's power draw (using a Voltcraft Plus Digital Multimeter VC-940).

The workload test involves typing a short (187-word) document, creating a small spreadsheet and a graph, browsing a couple of web sites and playing a YouTube video (specifically, this one). Because the display is the major power-consuming component of a notebook, we performed the test twice — with the screen brightness set to the maximum and then the minimum setting.

The Classmate acquitted itself pretty well, drawing an average of 16.7W with maximum backlight and 15.3W with minimum backlight. Idle and peak power figures were 14.7W and 20.8W respectively with maximum backlight and 13.7W/17.8W with mimimum backlight.

For comparison, the Inveneo Computing Station, a low-power desktop system, had an average power draw of 19.9W, peaking at 23.5W, under Windows XP. Another small-format notebook, the popular ASUS Eee (the 2G Surf model), drew slightly less power in the workload test than the Classmate: 14W and 13.2W on average with max/min backlight respectively, and 16.5W and 15.6W peak.

The total time to complete the workload test is a function of operator work-rate, system usability and system performance, and is therefore a somewhat fuzzy benchmark. However, it's worth noting that the Classmate's two workload test runs (17.9 minutes and 20.5 minutes) were slightly quicker than those for the desktop Inveneo Computing Station (22.5 minutes under Windows XP and 31.2 minutes under Linux).

Bootup time is a more straightforward performance measure, and the Classmate takes around 70 seconds on average to reach an idle XP desktop from power-on. Opening the Internet Explorer browser to Google (set as the home page) took only 5 seconds or so.

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