Excellent audio with a cool factor.

This tiny notebook, measuring a mere 26.5 x 22 x 2.1cm looks quite ordinary on the outside, yet comes with quite an interesting processor inside. The Valeo CP10 is not powered by Intel or AMD, nor even Transmeta, but instead has one of the first VIA Antaur CPUs we've come across.

The i-Buddie’s biggest claim to fame in the notebook stakes is that it keeps its travel weight down by eschewing an in-built battery. The reasoning is that most notebooks are either used at home or the office, where they’re plugged into the mains, but aren’t powered up on the road much.

We see a lot of notebooks at PC Authority, but like the BenQ JoyBook 8000 (page 37), the Portege 2010 was an immediate crowd pleaser when it was removed from it's shipping materials, garnering lots of "oohs" and "aahs" from techies and non-techies alike.

Although the Tablet PC was launched with much hype and fanfare, many media outlets have been sceptical as to the validity of the technology. However, the experience delivered by using a Tablet PC firsthand, for any length of time cannot help but impress. I myself went from cynical observer to total convert after trialling three tablets.

Receiving this model last month, we knew we were seeing innovation in action with the introduction of OLED technology and the ultra wide and bright 2.2-inch display. OLED allows for less power consumption while providing a noticeably brighter and clearer display than other technologies – perfect for direct sunlight and angular viewing.

In what is an interesting first time foray into the crowded PDA market, Acer is hedging its bets by releasing both Palm- and Pocket PC-based PDAs. It's a curious gambit to be sure, and we're content to see which PDA branch blossoms while the other withers.

Looking quite a lot like what I imagined the son of Apple's Titanium and Powerbook lines of notebooks would turn out, the AStone notebook features both the Titanium's solid matte silver magnesium-alloy body with the Powerbook's white limned styling. From the very outset this makes the AStone one visually appealing notebook.

PDA sales are flattening, and have been for some time, but it doesn't mean that the sector's dead. Smartphones have their place and are increasing in sales in Australia, but they can't always offer the power or flexibility of a good PDA.

The BenQ DC2300 is a 2.1-megapixel camera with 2,048 x 1,536 optical resolution, 8MB internal memory, fixed focus, and built-in flash. It stores images and video in MMC and SD card media, has a USB interface and takes AA batteries. A fairly low priced camera, the DC2300 offers white-balance modes, metering modes and exposure adjustments.

The Sony PEG-NV70X Clie marks a welcome shift in the PDA landscape from the Pocket PC, with a few firsts up its sleeves.

Acer is hedging its bets by releasing both Palm and Pocket PC-based PDAs

BenQs small 1.3-megapixel camera is a stylish pearl coloured affair, and is one of the tiniest cameras that PC Authority has reviewed so far (aside, coincidentally, from the BenQ 300mini we reviewed in May 2002, page 81).

The Qosmio is the absolute pinnacle in multimedia notebooks. It brings everything you need for a good Windows XP Media Center Edition (MCE) system and squeezes it into a notebook form-factor. Albeit a large notebook form-factor. Yes the Qosmio is a huge and heavy notebook, but it's not nearly as heavy as it would have been if it was packed with desktop internals as many desknotes of this size usually are.

The N-Gage is as chunky as a phone, but when you use it with both hands to play games the N-Gage shines. The 3D processor is good, so you can get some reasonable depth-of-field gaming on the device.

This is the second Smartphone we've reviewed (O2's Xphone, March 2004, page 55) but, unlike the Xphone, the Motorola MPx200 features a clamshell design. Smallish, black and sleek, the MPx200 is a Tri-band GSM 900/1800/1900 phone with GPRS which enables email, SMS, MMS and WAP capabilities.

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.

Not a bad notebook, the Satellite 1110 marks Toshiba's first foray into the sub-$2,500 notebook market, and it's a welcome one. By its own merits, the Satellite 1110's specifications are reasonable: 1.5GHz Celeron, 128MB RAM, 16MB RADEON Mobility, 20GB HD and DVD-ROM, but in comparison to the field it was average in all regards.

The Notino 3400S is the second cheapest notebook in this roundup. Unfortunately, it's outdone on almost every other front by the opposition.

There's one thing that's immediately noticeable and annoying about the otherwise superb Xphone II: it's incredibly slow to turn on and boot up. We clocked about 72 seconds from pressing the power button to connecting to our service, with about a minute of that taken up by just booting the phone's OS.