“What business traveler wouldn’t want a notebook with double the
normal battery life? That’s Transmeta’s promise, and the first
taker becomes available in late October: a new edition of Sony’s
VAIO PictureBook.”
“Naturally, more than a few mobile computer users took notice
when Transmeta promised a battery-friendly notebook processor that
would dramatically increase the PCWorld.com’s tests show that some
of Transmeta’s battery-life claims stand up. But be prepared to pay
a hefty performance penalty.”
“In our battery tests of the preproduction PictureBook
PCG-C1VN, the unit lasted two hours and 32 minutes, which is 50
minutes longer than one of Sony’s most recent PictureBooks,
the PCG-C1XS, which we tested for comparison. … Mininotebooks
traditionally score poorly on performance tests, so we didn’t
expect the new PictureBook to break any PC WorldBench 2000 records.
Still, its score of 66 is shockingly low. Even with half
the memory of the Transmeta unit, the older Pentium II-based
PictureBook scored an 81, so you’re losing a noticeable 19
percent in performance (maybe even more, since the older unit would
probably perform better with equivalent memory).”