Despite some odd feature choices, this is an affordable powerhouse of a laptop. A great value mid-range Centrino 2 laptop, as long as you're not worried about battery life.

Intel has been banging on about Centrino 2 lately, so it was good to finally get a chance to test the claims courtesy of a spanking new mid-range Centrino 2 M51 Va courtesy of ASUS.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Ongoing concerns about the security of wireless networks and an increasing demand to be able to connect remotely to office and home networks has forced many people to look for a reasonably priced VPN solution. Virtual Private Networks use the Internet to establish a secure link between an external PC and a local network.

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.

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.

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.

Powered by a 1.6GHz mobile Pentium processor, featuring dual-band 802.11a/g wireless capability and sporting a 15.4in wide-screen display, the Dell D800 represents the best of the Latitude series of notebooks. At around 3.3kg, it is not light, nor is it thin – but is complemented by an exceptional finish and a solid set of technology.

Intel's new Centrino is possibly the most hyped notebook technology ever launched. Centrino is the name for a group of Intel's technologies including a tweaked P3-M CPU, built-in wireless, and excellent battery life.