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Weight a minute
One of the important things about a laptop is its weight, so how come some manufacturers seem to get away with either being vague about it or just understating it?
We bought an HP Compaq nc2400 for a client a few months back. According to HP, the nc2400 has a weight 'starting at 1.29kg'.
We weighed it and found it was 1.5 kg, and we couldn't see any way to get the weight down short of
removing fairly important components, such as the battery and hard disk.
Similarly we've just bought a Toshiba Portege R500, which apparently has a weight 'starting at 0.979kg'. It actually weighs 1.1 kg, and again there's nothing we can remove to make it lighter unless we're happy to use it without the battery.
Exactly how are the manufacturers coming up with these very attractive weight figures, and how can we find out what the truth actually is?
Phil Stanton



We're contacting HP and Toshiba to get a comment on this.
Of course, you can be sure any notebook wieght specified in a review in PCW is accurate since we measure them on our own scales - and that weight includes both the power adapter and battery.
Posted by Will Stapley | October 18, 2007 4:43 PM