A fantastic specification notebook with all the trimmings you'd expect to find on more expensive notebooks, the Joybook 8100-V13 has a 15.4in widescreen WXGA with native 1280 x 800 resolution. With ATI's Mobility RADEON 9600 graphics, boasting 64MB dedicated video memory, it's great for DVD playback or gaming -- the unit returned 9,502 marks under 3DMark01SE Pro, more than enough to provide comfortable gameplay with a decent number of fps even in recent games. BenQ has gone as far as to include not just a DVD-ROM for DVD movie playback, but an optical DVD writer, capable of 2-speed DVD+R media writing, ideal for both business archiving or for personal backup.

From the rarefied heights of Dells Inspiron 8100 (reviewed October 2001, page 71) we take a step back with the Toshiba Tecra 9000. Like the Inspiron 8100 the Tecra is a Pentium III-M CPU, from the Tualatin family of processors, although this is the 933MHz version.

Fastest Notebook

A great piece of hardware, backed up by BlackBerry’s legendary services.

A year ago you would have been laughed at for dreaming of a notebook clocking in at 1GHz. But the 1GHz mobile processor duly arrived midyear, leaving us pondering what the next step was.

A good range of business features are slightly let down by the form factor.

New technology claims to cuts storage array power and cooling costs in half.

There’s a lot to consider before jumping on the BlackBerry bandwagon. Should you or shouldn’t you use a dedicated blackberry device?