While large formed notebooks are great for the users with a static location, ultra portables are still the easiest and best way of conducting business for students, business people and the road warriors.

Widescreen notebooks are the way of the future, really they are. With entertainment now proficiently done on the go, why would we go back to limited 4:3 aspect ratio? It's far easier to work on two spreadsheets concurrently in widescreen without needing to alt tab like a madman. Toshiba, like many manufacturers, has seen this need and provided such a product.

For those users after the shift away from a Microsoft world to an OS X platform, Apple have got a deal for you. Starting at a mere $1699, you can pick up an G4 iBook capable of more than just entertainment uses.

This pre-production notebook was shipped to us in a professional looking silver lockable briefcase. We were expecting to see top secret government papers rather than a slimline ultra low voltage (ULV) notebook.

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.

Despite not being the smallest or lightest notebook, this veritable speed demon packs a 3.06GHz desktop Pentium 4 processor and is matched with an ATI Mobility 9000 graphics adaptor and quarter gig of PC2100 DDR RAM. Another notebook to dispose of legacy parallel, PS/2 and serial ports, it boasts a pair of rear mounted USB ports, S-Video output and FireWire connectivity. Also included are 10/100 Ethernet, a 56K modem and single PCMCIA slot for card expansion.

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.