WorldBench performance
WorldBench's overall score is a pretty good indication of general-use performance for desktop computers. This benchmark uses scripting to step through a series of tasks in common Windows applications and then produces an overall score for comparison. WorldBench also records individual results for its component application tests, allowing us to compare performance in each.

The XPS M1210's beefy hardware specs translate into a solid gain over the older Centrino systems in WorldBench—and into a score of nearly 100. To put that score into further context, the M1210 is faster than many high-end desktop configs we tested just two years ago, including one based on the Pentium Extreme Edition 3.4GHz.

The XPS M1210's strength is broad and deep; it leads in all tests, sometimes finishing the task well before the other two laptops. Notice, in particular, two tests: Microsoft Office and Mozilla plus Windows Media Encoder. Both of these tests involve multitasking, and the dual-core ThinkPad T60 and XPS M1210 outperform the Pentium M-based Sharp M4000 WideNote substantially. The M1210, in turn, easily outruns the T60 in media-intensive tasks like Photoshop and Windows Media Encoder, where the Core 2 Duo processor's four-issue-wide execution engine and ability to execute 128-bit SSE instructions in a single cycle can really make a difference.