Warm Things in your Lap

You may well have thought that it would be nice to have something to sit on your lap to keep you company on a cold winter evening. But we have found that laptop companions vary drastically in price, quality and reliability. Some of these models require the investment of a considerable amount of time and effort. Making the wrong choice could foreshadow a lifelong nightmare. Plokta? has assessed the suitability of different models of lapwarmer. For this report, we tested a baby (Marianne Cain), a cat (George), a laptop PC (Gateway Solo 5100) and a book (Master and Commander by Patrick O'Brian).

How We Tested

We put each model through a rigorous set of tests, summarised in the chart below. Both the baby and the cat became non-functional when we plugged them into the mains to test their recharge time. We have therefore been unable to rate the baby and cat for these features, and had to obtain replacement samples. The suppliers were unreasonably irritated by this request, given that the failures were evidently due to severe faults. Following certain practical difficulties experienced by our testers, we introduced a further set of usability tests, including Suspend Mode, Findability, Coming When Called and Staying Where Put.

1 -- Batteries did not discharge during testing; in the case of the baby our testers felt that this was more regrettable than useful.

² -- As noted in the text, our first samples did not survive this test.

³ -- No recharging effect was noted, but the battery did not appear to discharge during use.

⁴ -- Snores.

⁵ -- Caution: extendibility may be so tempting as to add significantly to the original purchase price.

⁶ -- After allowing for the car seat, stroller, cot, changing bag, nappies, wipes, and ten foot pole that accompany it everywhere.

⁷ -- And our testers have the claw-marks to prove it.

⁸ -- This would have rated a except for the protective camouflage that it enjoyed in our test environment.

⁹ -- If no promise of food is involved in the call, this rates a .

¹⁰ -- This feature appears to deteriorate over time.

Best Buy

The book, while economically priced and scoring well on our usability tests, scored poorly for features. The cat scored only moderately for usability while having virtually no useful features at all. The baby was highly rated by our testers for short-term use, but they felt that the novelty would wear off this item quite quickly, and it might well become irritating in the longer run. Its lack of a user-activated suspend mode and volume control were particularly criticised. We recommend the laptop PC as our Best Buy for its high degree of usability combined with a good feature set. Those on a limited budget might look into the book as a low-cost alternative.