We've put both mini-notebooks through their paces, and while Linux fans may disagree, the winner is clear.

You can't help but to notice the slim-line chassis with its brushed aluminium finish this machine sports. Flipping down the front panel reveals the front-mounted audio, USB, and infrared port, which is a nice inclusion for those corporate customers using PDAs or mobile phones with IR synching.

See our side-by-side comparison of the three big guns in the sub-$1,000 mini notebook race, the ASUS N10, S101 and the Eee PC 1000H.

A Lexmark multi-function device, the P6250, won our last photo printer roundup, so the expectations were high for its big brother, the X7170. Unlike our Labs Winner, this machine is definitely targeted at the business market. For an extra $100 premium, the machine adds office-oriented functions such as faxing, a copy feeder and a better scanner. It's also noticeably larger than its brethren.

Beautifully engineered and constructed, the Mac Pro is also the fastest PC we’ve ever seen by some margin.

A decent machine with plenty of power, but it’s not earth shattering in terms of features and value.

With the same type of easily removable tool-less housing as the ThinkCentre S50 this HP machine can be stripped and rebuilt very quickly, which will appeal to the corporate IT techs and SMEs wishing to avoid lengthy hardware failure downtime.

Digital photography is gaining in popularity, and the features offered by the HP PhotoSmart 2710 are designed to cater to this: PictBridge, a large colour screen and on-printer photo editing. The HP is the most expensive machine here, but isn't geared to one particular market or another.

Movie and photo transfer capability, MP3 playback, bearable speakers… this is the best portable gaming machine ever

Narrowly missing out on an award, this machine deserves a special mention for its execution and incredible value for money rating.

The Acer Aspire SA20 is a machine built on a budget and it performs accordingly.

For such a high specification machine with a large display, we didn’t have high expectations of battery life. We were wrong. Not only is this one of the best looking and functional notebooks we’ve played with in some time, but this notebook managed to stay operating at full load with a looping productivity test for well over three and a half hours – enough for students, road warriors and home users.

Housed in a fairly attractive albeit plain chassis, this machine comes shipped with performance where it counts as well as plenty of potential for the tweakers and serial upgraders. A Pentium 4 3.0GHz processor is impressive enough for a system with a price tag under $2,500, but to also include a DVD burner, TFT display, good quality 2.1 speaker set up and wireless keyboard and mouse combo is previously unheard of.

Our poor receptionist didn’t quite know what to do when Altech’s monolithic machine turned up. She had a point.

Windows Media Center Edition (MCE) 2005 was launched with quite a bit of fanfare late last year, and not least of all because it was the first time in its 18 month life Australians could buy systems based on the OS.

Although falling slightly below par in our quality testing, the IntelliPro 4000GX managed to claw back points with a score 16 percent above the average for value, primarily due to its incredibly low initial purchase price.

After enjoying the Satellite 2800 (reviewed issue 42, p80) so much, the Toshiba Satellite Pro 4600 is a disappointment. This is surprising in that the general belief would be that the more powerful machine would be more appealing to the technically inclined than the Celeron-based Satellite 2800.

The first time PC Authority got to take a look at a Twinhead notebook system (the Slimnote VX, Labs tested issue 20, p59) was back in July's test of budget notebook computers.

The HP Pavilion s5180a punches above its weight and provides a welcoming entry point for a starter or low-end upgrade system.

Living up to the sub-notebook name, this portable system from IBM represents one of the best instances of miniaturised engineering