Recognising that the Linux desktop market is only going to grow, and that there's money to made in the corporate arena, Sun's Java Desktop 2003 is squarely aimed at companies looking for a cheap, easy, and compatible alternative to Microsoft's (often expensive) dominance.

The Excel G736 notebook from Protac is a desktop replacement, and as well as better-than-normal notebook specifications it also comes with the other traditional trapping of a desktop replacement notebook: it's big, it's chunky, and it's heavy.

Red Hat's latest offering is a finely tuned offensive into the lucrative corporate desktop market. With the Linux steamroller on a collision course for Redmond the last year has seen a number of major wins for the open source upstart with corporations such as IBM and governments that include Germany, France, China, Japan, Russia and Britain either already making the switch or considering it. And not just for servers, but on workstations too.

Incredibly powerful laptop system, with a few small issues that hold it back from true glory.

Formerly called Redmond Linux, Lycoris is probably the most Windows-like Linux around.

We find this model hovering in the no-man's-land between desktop replacement and notebook. Its large form factor and huge screen come at the expense of weight, while the wireless and large battery do make it viable for users on the move.

Despite various attempts at Windows Desktop alternatives, Linux is still best suited to servers, for which Red Hat is by far the most popular choice. With this in mind, it came as no surprise when in May 2002 Red Hat split its product line in two: Linux and Enterprise Linux.

Superb performance in one of the sturdiest and best-looking gaming laptops we’ve seen – the Alienware M17x is worth the expense.

Pioneer’s new DreamBook Power uses the Clevo D900K chassis which offers the size and space required to cool the blisteringly fast components contained within (see the specs box below).

The notebook winner this month was a close call. Two units stood out as being at the top of the multimedia field: the Pioneer D47K and the Acer Aspire 1802WSM. Feature-by-feature they were very closely matched, but we chose the Pioneer for several reasons, one of which was its advanced media capabilities.

If laptops were cars, then the Pioneer Power 470 would be a caravan - a quick scan of the specs reveals that it has almost everything. The 470 model we tested was a 3.06GHz Pentium 4 unit with a large 60GB of drive space and 256MB of DDR.

When it comes to desktop replacements, the Dell Inspiron 5000 is a case study in portable power.

Not only is SuSE Linux Professional 8.1 the most complete distribution, it's also one of the friendliest.

An expensive board, but a fascintating way of getting a powerful, quiet system, especially if you're prepared to tweak.

A huge screen and an affordable price, but it doesn’t rival a desktop PC where power is concerned

Dell’s new Inspirons are more about colour and value than performance and excitement.

A decent multimedia notebook, but it’s not exciting enough for the price.

If you're after an ultra portable, this isn't the notebook for you. If you're after a large form factored portable desktop replacement, this could be the ticket. This behemoth of a notebook features a 17-inch widescreen display and a footprint to match.

This is not the first 'desknote' that we've reviewed (see Protac DeskNote, June 2002, page 37) but in our estimation the Aspire 1703SC is the first system that truly expounds the virtues of true desknote-ism.

The first OS to make a serious effort at an easy, integrated Linux to rival Windows was the now defunct Corel LinuxOS.