Viewmaster's 17in LCD is decidedly average in price, but it still manages to deliver quite an impact with good features and a quality Acer TFT screen.

Built around the same sturdy housing as the Targa Traveller C50, Viewmaster's Portiva NVP05 model has a few differentiating properties.

Performing well above average, the Viewmaster MSB670 toyed playfully with the Sony SDMX72 in all our tests, ranking just under by losing the all important battle on features

The Omega Viewmaster Portiva 5Z71 is another notebook comprising of tradeoffs; the blistering Pentium-M 2GHz processor offset by an NVIDIA GeForce Go660 graphics card with only 64MB of video memory, accompanied by the smallest hard drive of the bunch.

The experience of buying a computer can be a harrowing ordeal -- with the amount of jargon and information being thrown around, inexperienced users or people purchasing their first PC may find it all a bit daunting.

Hallmark has opted to take advantage of Intel’s Extreme Graphics 2 integrated shared graphics, taking up to 64MB of video memory from the on-board 512MB of PC2700 DDR to power the display. While not designed for gaming, it did manage to churn out almost 3000 points in 3DMark01SE with some help from its Pentium M 1.6GHz CPU.

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.

The MC151 is light in weight, and the second lightest on the pocket at $519. The plain looking chassis offers no swivel functions and tilt is minor.

LCD monitors look pretty slick, and beat most of the competition on looks alone.

An above average overall finisher, the Targa's claim to fame is undoubtedly its long battery run times, achieving the best part of 5 hours on a single charge whilst juggling a full productivity workload of Photoshop and Microsoft Office.

Boasting two D-Sub and two audio ports along with DVI-D, the Sony SDMX72 presents a range of features that even surpasses the winning BenQ FP791.

Another low-cost screen, Vibrant's VL5A9PL 15in model had a number of setbacks.

Coming in under our stringent pricing scheme, ASUS bettered it by $50 and managed to include some great hardware and features unavailable in some of the more expensive units.

Here at PC Authority we see a lot of computer systems. Not surprising really, it’s what we do. But it’s not often we see a system this carefully assembled. Every precaution has been taken to ensure the system has clear airflow to help regulate the temperature and keep it cool.

The CWS SuperPro S3 has some very nice components under the hood: its equipped with the fastest Athlon XP in this months crop (a 2100+), 512MB of PC2100 DDR and an 80GB HDD.

Taking first place overall, the MegaBook M510C had a bit of a mixed run to the final score tally, managing only fifth place in PCMark04 then unanimously taking out first place with a score nearly breaking 10,000 3DMarks, impressive for a notebook, let alone one under $2500.