Building a Laptop Guide

Because my job includes trying out shiny new things like iPods, HDTVs and digital cameras, it's often assumed that I have the best gig at the paper. But that means I must occasionally perform the mind-numbing, degrading task that I spent most of Wednesday on -- calling tech support.

I did this with six different manufacturers, two calls each. Fun!

All this was in the service of yesterday's guide to laptop computers, our first look at this category since roughly this time last year. Read my shopping advice in my weekly Fast Forward column.

I'll be online at 2 p.m. ET today to talk about this and take other questions you might have about personal tech topics. If you miss the chat, you can always read the transcript here. In the meantime, read on for a few inside details about my laptop research.

Battering Batteries

The most boring part of any laptop review is running down its battery in a variety of scenarios: first with a DVD playing with every available power-saving option shut off, then with music playing and varying combinations of power-saving options enabled. With a Mac, I can at least leave the computer unattended; Mac OS X logs every system event from start-up to shutdown, allowing me to look up the exact second when it went to sleep.

But I've yet to find a program that provides a feature like this in Windows. Without it, I have to sit around until the screen shuts off and the machine enters standby mode, then jot down the time.

With six machines to try, I opted to do my tests all at once. I set up six computers with the same set of MP3 files, clicking the "play" button in each machine's copy of Windows Media Player (or iTunes, in Apple's case) and then quickly unplugged each one in succession. The room sounded like a loony bin for wayward DJs. After hearing five laptops each play a different set of songs, I can assure you that Windows Media Player really does randomize its playlist when you select "shuffled playback."

This testing even got (very, very slightly) dramatic at the end, when the MacBook and the Gateway NX260X were the last two machines still active. I briefly wondered if the two computers were using their Bluetooth wireless to fling insults at each other.

A Better Software Bundle

I only ranted about this in two different articles yesterday, so I'll try to be brief -- but why, why, why are Windows machines sold with such pathetically useless software bundles? These companies might as well ship the computer with just a stock copy of Windows XP and whatever drivers their hardware requires, considering how little of their additional software is worth keeping.

Some of it is downright embarrassing. Dell includes the MusicMatch program that Yahoo just declared obsolete. And look at all the companies that signed marketing deals with America Online that leave their machines' desktops and Start Menus littered with promotions for the online service that AOL now gives away for free.

The most annoying thing about the average PC's software bundle, however, is the laziness it shows. Don't even think about vendors that throw in last year's version of Microsoft Money (hi, Gateway!). When a company can't be bothered to bundle the current version of a free program like Adobe Reader, that's just pathetic.

But maybe these manufacturers really are pressed for time and can't do anything but recycle an old software bundle. As a public service, here's my own list of the software (all free!) that I'd bundle on a Windows PC sold to home users:

Mozilla Firefox

Mozilla Thunderbird

OpenOffice 2.0

iTunes

Picasa

Google Desktop

Skype

Windows Defender

AVG or Avast anti-virus

Computer Web Sites

I started this laptop-review project by going on each Web site of the major manufacturers (Sony fans take note: I invited that company to send a review machine, but they didn't have one available that met our price and weight guidelines). In doing this, I was surprised to find out how backward a computer vendor's Web site could be in 2006.

Take Toshiba's, please! This doesn't seem to have been revised substantially since 2002 or so. It describes the various models available only in the most generic, vague terms imaginable: "High impact Stunning Performance"

Maybe this is more informative? "Lightweight Mobile Vivid." (It's good to know that this laptop is mobile, unlike all the other portable computers Toshiba sells.)

If you want any fine-print details, like that minor detail called the computer's weight, you have to open a PDF file in your browser. This site isn't even easy to get to, with an address too long for anybody to be able to type from memory.

Most of the other companies act as if they actually want you to shop online. Dell and HP run slick, interactive online stores that not only update the price of your system to reflect each change in its configuration, but keep a box listing that price visible in your browser window as you scroll down the page. (HP loses some points for doing this in a way that doesn't work in Apple's Safari browser.)

IBM and Gateway aren't as efficient. Their stores require you to click a "Continue" or "Update Total" button to see the latest price, at which point you have to wait for a new page to load. Gateway, however, also greets you with a simple chart listing all of its laptop lines, their important features, their prices and any promotional offers.

Apple offers hardly any custom-configure options compared to the others, but it's also the easiest site to navigate in one important aspect: Just about every page on its site, outside of its online store, follows the same simple structure: apple.com/[product here]. Without running a Web search or following a link, I knew that I'd find Apple's propaganda about its new Mac Pro desktop workstations at apple.com/macpro.

Sunday's Round-Up

Besides the laptop stories, the personal-tech pages in yesterday's Sunday Business section featured these other articles:

In Web Watch, Frank Ahrens chronicled the latest sensation to hit YouTube: an elderly gentleman who goes by the user name of "geriatric1927."

Reporter Ylan Q. Mui writes how personal technology is taking the place of traditional school supplies when it comes to back-to-school must-haves.

And in Help File, I suggest one way to fine-tune a WiFi wireless network and explain how to control what kind of sleep your Windows laptop gets.