Hanover  - Except for colour-intensive photo processing work, contemporary 16 and 17-inch notebooks are perfectly adequate replacements for desktop PCs, reports German computer magazine c't.

The magazine tested five 16-inch and two 17-inch notebooks. Image quality in four of those did not hold up, even compared to cheaper monitors. But Sony's Vaio FW, Dell's Studio XPS 16 and Apple's MacBook Pro 17 had "overall better colours than most external monitors," albeit, with a more limited viewing angle.

Battery times differed greatly, with a range from 2 to 4.3 hours. Surprisingly, there was little difference in computing power. Those differences could only be determined thanks to software-testing programmes.

The extra price for a quad-core processor is only worth it for photo experts who need the computer for video and photo processing, reported the reviewers. Dual-core processors are adequate for all other users.

The price range was also large, from 600 to 1,530 euros (885 to 2,250 dollars). (dpa)