With the slow Australian take-off of the Centrino platform, higher spec, slightly larger form factored units are making their way into the marketplace. Intel's Pentium-M processors are ramping up in speed, now available in 1.7GHz values and still impressing.

Intel’s push on Centrino notebook branding has only made it so far in the six months since its introduction. So far prices have been high for Centrino notebooks, although Emagen looks set to change this mindset, now offering the N1000 model as a cost-effective alternative option to top of the line name brand notebooks with all the bells and whistles.

Although the mobile marketplace has been changing in the face of Centrino and the slow but gradual tablet PC adoption rate, large form factored (greater than single spindle) notebooks are still the order of the day.

This is no ordinary notebook, sporting Intel’s 1.6GHz Centrino processor with a 1MB on-die L2 cache, 400MHz frontside bus and a half gig of DDR. It’s nothing short of impressively fast.

Slightly less sturdy than previous Dell models we have seen, the D500 is finished in attractive silver bezel housing, the keyboard is comfortable to use and offers all the functionality of standard-sized desktop keyboards.

On receiving this unit, we were impressed by the mammoth 15.4in widescreen display. Although sceptical of its ability to perform given its monster display size, we were proven wrong at every turn, with the 8600 performing similarly to the more expensive Toshiba Tecra S1 Notebook (July 2003 page 40). Absolutely bursting at the gills with features, this Notebook boasts an array of connectivity options including side mounted FireWire and IrDA, while on the rear of the unit we find two USB and legacy serial, parallel and S-Video ports.

The first Dothan notebook to roll off the rank, we were interested to see exactly how much real-world gain Intel is offering in its revised Centrino platform.

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.

Despite not being the smallest or lightest notebook, this veritable speed demon packs a 3.06GHz desktop Pentium 4 processor and is matched with an ATI Mobility 9000 graphics adaptor and quarter gig of PC2100 DDR RAM. Another notebook to dispose of legacy parallel, PS/2 and serial ports, it boasts a pair of rear mounted USB ports, S-Video output and FireWire connectivity. Also included are 10/100 Ethernet, a 56K modem and single PCMCIA slot for card expansion.

While we wait with bated breath for the imminent (or was that eventual?) release of Microsoft Media Centre into Australia, the number of companies cashing in on the media functionality of next generation consumer electronics is growing quickly.

When we ran four tablet PCs in December 2002 (Issue 61, page 36) we got plenty of response from readers looking to find out more about them. Over a year on now and tablets have increased dramatically in spec and design although pricing hasn’t reduced as much as we’d expected - possibly since they still haven’t made mass market appeal and sales.

This pre-production notebook was shipped to us in a professional looking silver lockable briefcase. We were expecting to see top secret government papers rather than a slimline ultra low voltage (ULV) notebook.

Absolutely jam packed with features, this notebook isn't your run-of-the-mill basic-function productivity laptop. At every turn we found hardware above and beyond the call of duty including a 64MB FX5200 graphics card, sexy widescreen display, 80GB hard disk drive and DVD-RAM/DVD-R/RW slot mounted drive for all your backup and home movie-making needs. A hybrid somewhere between legacy continuation and dismissal, this notebook features three rear-mounted USB 2.0 ports and parallel connectivity.

Wrapped in an attractive silver chassis, this sexy looking notebook is easy on the eye, and features all of the latest gadgets. The left-hand side of the machine features the usual legacy parallel and DB9 monitor out for use with an external monitor, although both are hidden beneath a rubber cover so as not to ruin the smooth clean lines of this housing.