Notebook Review

This is a pretty fair review site if you're looking for the lowdown on a new notebook, laptop or netbook. I have not used the other categories myself so I will leave them for others.

Although the reviews tend to be comprehensive and take the time to include "synthetic" benchmarks (theoretical performance, rather than using specific applications), I have a small complaint in that the machines used for the benchmarking comparisons are not always the ones I'd expect to see, and may change from one benchmark to another. So, for example, you may see a machine you are interested in compared with one set of competitors for performance, but a different set for another parameter. It makes it a little harder to get a quick comparison than I would like.

I also noted that despite Lenovo occupying almost all of the current top positions in the league table, they weren't appearing that much in the benchmarking. I would have expected, given that these machines are apparently ones that attract the most interest, others would be compared to them more frequently.

Minor issues, really. As is my main complaint, which isn't minor if you're using a relatively slow system on a public wifi network (as many if not all netbook users will be): the site loading is badly delayed by ads and ad servers. Not only did I have to manually dismiss a page-sized ad just to get into the site, but then I had to wait for Google syndication, doubleclick and other ad servers to be connected up. All this takes unnecessary time unless you're at home or office on a faster network. And once there, a couple or three inches at the end of the page are devoted to loads of Google ads too. I know it's to be expected, since the failure of banner advertising to raise revenue alone, but I have to wonder just what percentage of the visitors to this site is going to welcome and use all or any of those ads, compared to the percentage for whom it is more irritating than anything. I knocked off a star for it, anyway, patience never having been a virtue of mine.