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 Samsung M40 plus is a slick and stylish notebook, but unfortunately just doesn’t cut it compared to the others on test here.

Everybody, who hasn’t already got one, wants a decent laptop.

The ultimate portable media player.

Not all multimedia notebooks have to weigh in around the $5000 mark. Digital Star’s 15.4in widescreen PowerNote Z71V offers very good value for money for a laptop sporting a 2GHz Pentium M, 1GB of RAM and a 128MB NVIDIA GeForce Go 6600 graphics chip.

The Toshiba Satellite P30 is a 17-inch behemoth with a price tag to match.

The Dell Inspiron 6000 walks into this roundup with a serious disadvantage – packing only an Intel P-M 1.86GHz and an ATI Mobility RADEON X300 it is easily outgunned by the competition.

The Acer Aspire 1692 WLMi is a story of compromises; a +/-/RAM dual layer burner and gigabit Ethernet are offset by Windows XP Home, only 512MB of RAM and the slowest processor and hard disk of the bunch.

When everything from your movie collection to your photo album is digital, why would you want to watch it all on a tiny monitor with tinny speakers while your big television and surround sound sits idle in the lounge room?