Top 100: New Business-Class ThinkPad Flies
Think about a ThinkPad if you travel often, even if you're stuck in coach: The new IBM ThinkPad R40 we tested for this month's Top 15 Notebook PCs chart rates as one of the fastest portables we've ever tested, yet its battery lasted nearly 3.5 hours--enough to get you from Kansas City to Kalamazoo on a single charge. Five bucks to watch the in-flight movie? The ThinkPad R40's built-in DVD/CD-RW combo drive lets you sit back and watch your own on its 15-inch display.
If you like the R40's screen, you'll love the 17-inch LCDs from the Top 10 Monitors chart. The Best Buy Dell 1702FP costs only $549.
- Desktop PCs
- PCs Under $900
- Notebook PCs
- Photo Printers
- 17-inch LCD Monitors
- Scanners
- Digital Cameras
Freelance writers Richard Jantz, Dan Littman, Mick Lockey, and Carla Thornton, and PC World reviews editors Richard Baguley, Tracey Capen, Sea?!n Captain, Rebecca Freed, Alexandra Krasne, Melissa J. Perenson, and Alan Stafford contributed to the Top 100 section this month. Ulrike Diehlmann, Julio Giannobile, Elliott Kirschling, Jeff Kuta, Tony K. Leung, and Thomas Luong of the PC World Test Center performed testing on the products reviewed in this section, with logistical support provided by Julian Weatherby.
Your Guide to the Top 100
Each month, we test a large number of PCs, printers, monitors, and other products. Only the best products land on the charts, which are refreshed monthly.
System configurations are shown as tested. The overall rating for each product is calculated on a 100-point scale and reflects results from our hands-on evaluations and performance tests. A 90-point score is exceptional, while one in the 70s is above average.
The PC WorldBench 4 score is a measure of how fast a PC can run a mix of common business applications as compared with our baseline machine, a Gateway Select 1200 with a 1.2-GHz Athlon processor, 128MB of PC133 SDRAM, and a 20GB hard drive. For example, a PC that scores 120 is 20 percent faster than the baseline system. The policies score is based on vendor support policies (not shown on charts). Click here for additional details on how we compile charts for the Top 100.