As we mentioned previously, we are comparing the NEC Versa UltraLite against a full-size notebook, the Acer Travelmate 739TLV. The Acer notebook sports a Intel Pentium III-M 850MHz processor with SpeedStep that operates at 700MHz when in mobile mode. More detailed information can be found about the 739TLV on Acer's website . The NEC Versa UltraLite subnotebook on the other hand, operates at 600MHz. The purpose of the comparison is not to create a head-to-head 600MHz Crusoe to 600MHz Pentium shoot out. Transmeta's own benchmarking endeavors have shown that when faced off against the same speed Intel processor, the benchmarks place Crusoe in second place. Rather, emphasis should be placed on battery life, and on the relative scoring of the 600MHz Crusoe processor in the series of productivity benchmarks which are to follow. Since we are dealing with two different speed processors, you will expect the PIII to outperform the Crusoe in each case.

Synthetic Battery Life Tests

To test the battery life of both notebooks as accurately as possible we set up the following test parameters before running BatteryMark 4.0.1. Both the Acer 739TLV and the NEC UltraLite had their batteries completely drained and then fully charged overnight. To reduce the impact on the battery life by such variables as the screen brightness, each LCD display was turned down to its' lowest possible setting.

Thus, with a freshly charged battery and screens set to the lowest possible brightness, the benchmark was conducted twice.

The Acer notebook was configured so that Speed Step was running in "battery optimized mode", a setting that yield the best possible comparison against the Crusoe-based NEC UltraLite insofar as power consumption is concerned.

BatteryMark 4.0.1 measures battery life on notebook computers running Windows 95, Windows Me, Windows 98, Windows NT 4.0, or Windows 2000. BatteryMark does this by running three different 32-bit software workload engines and periodical rest times that drain a notebook's battery in a way that mimics real use. The benchmark returns its results in terms of the duration the notebook was able to remain operable. Note that the test does not make use of either the FDD or CDROM. Longer life times are best.

BatteryMark 4.0.1 Benchmark Results
Notebook	Test 1	Test 2
NEC Versa UltraLite	5:25	5:36
ACER Travelmate 739TLV	3:54	4:01

As you can see by the preceding graph, the NEC Versa UltraLite was able to remain in use for about 5 and a half hours. Comparatively, the Acer 739TLV remained operable for only 4 hours. A difference of one and a half hours of use, or 28.3% between the NEC and Acer is quite significant and exhibits one of the main benefits of the Crusoe processor - its' low power consumption.

The NEC UltraLite uses two batteries, a built-in 1800mAH Lithium Polymer battery and a removable 2500mAH Lithium-Ion battery pack. The Acer 739TLV uses a single removable 5400mAH Lithium-Ion battery pack.