Once you go mobile, you won’t go back. We uncover the hardware, the plans and the services that’ll unshackle you from the office.

With a price beaten only by Apple's iBook, Targa's offering to the multimedia market segment could easily be confused for their budget line of products. Clocking in at only 1.5GHz, this isn't the beefiest CPU in our roundup, but the 64MB of dedicated video memory, based on ATIs Mobility RADEON 9600 generation GPU, helped carry it through.

IT department's problem, say end users.

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.

The Acer Aspire has a lot of handy multimedia functions that help it work as a desktop replacement/media unit. One of the Aspire’s main selling points is the Arcade feature, which is a Windows Media Centre clone. A button on the notebook fascia opens Arcade, bypassing the Windows OS and enabling all media player functions: DVD, MP3 etc. It works quite well but isn’t as graphically stunning as MCE.

The notebook winner this month was a close call. Two units stood out as being at the top of the multimedia field: the Pioneer D47K and the Acer Aspire 1802WSM. Feature-by-feature they were very closely matched, but we chose the Pioneer for several reasons, one of which was its advanced media capabilities.

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.

Move to 3G still lagging.

The Twinhead Efio is a mixed beast. It has some very good features, such as an all-magnesium casing and ATI Mobility 9700, but it also has some middling features, like a relatively slow 1.8GHz Intel processor and 4:3 screen. The unit is well made and well set out however.

Another notebook to embrace the entertainment market and sell units with widescreen 16:10 aspect ratio displays, this PowerNote packs some serious hardware under the hood, pushing not only AMD's Mobile Athlon 64 3200+ processor, but also ATI's Mobility RADEON 9700 a 60GB, 7200rpm hard disk drive and a multiformat 4-speed DVD burner for disc creation on the go.

This 8200 is almost identical to the model we reviewed in (September 2002, page 39), but it now packs ATI's new RADEON Mobility 9000, the first full-featured DirectX 8.1 compliant mobile video chip to market.

We provide the commentary on a bruising eight-round battle between Vista and Tiger.

Although heavily kitted out with an ATI Mobility RADEON 9700 featuring 128MB of dedicated video memory, 1.5GHz Pentium M and half a gigabyte of PC2700 DDR, the Zephyra XT finished in the lower half for overall placement.

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.

A superb package for the price, with plenty of power. Only the unambitious battery life lets it down.

Good value, but it needs to decide whether it’s a business or consumer notebook.

Very powerful and, with few features missing, it’s good value at the price.

Solidly built and packed with features, HP's flagship nx9420 is a very good notebook.

The Acer has all the bells and whistles you're going to need as a student, or mobile office worker; and then some.

Sony typically asks a little more than their competitors for similar products, but this usually pays off in the quality of workmanship and the reliability associated with most Sony products. The Sony VAIO VGN-S28GP is an extremely well-built notebook and should provide rock-solid performance for years to come.