From budget laptops to ultra-tiny netbooks, ultraportables and high performance, we explain the tricks to finding out the ultimate laptop at the right price.

It looks the Asus Eee Box isn’t the only interesting mini-desktop around. Amid the swathes of Centrino 2 and small form factor notebooks at IDF this week, we spotted this – a mini Centrino 2 desktop.

What will you be buying, using and drooling over this year? Tim Dean looks at the astounding products and technologies due to hit in the next 12 months.

Can’t decide between an Eee and a Wind? A Mini note or an Aspire One? Believe it or not, there’s a bunch of old school smaller laptops that may do the job for less money. We took a look at 7 old school ultraportables.

The Asus U6V simply can’t compete with the new breed of Centrino 2 ultraportables

Powered by an Intel Pentium-M 1.6GHz, the Modtech Civic Diamond 1600W Centrino notebook has a decent core specification, including a useful 512MB DDR RAM, 40GB of disk space and an ATI Mobility RADEON 9000 card offering 64MB of non-shared memory.

Long-lasting battery, enough power to go, and a lightweight design: this has it all in a small package

Toshiba’s resident portable computer visionary speaks about hardware design, Vista, and the future of notebook tech.