The Qosmio is the absolute pinnacle in multimedia notebooks. It brings everything you need for a good Windows XP Media Center Edition (MCE) system and squeezes it into a notebook form-factor. Albeit a large notebook form-factor. Yes the Qosmio is a huge and heavy notebook, but it's not nearly as heavy as it would have been if it was packed with desktop internals as many desknotes of this size usually are.

Looking quite a lot like what I imagined the son of Apple's Titanium and Powerbook lines of notebooks would turn out, the AStone notebook features both the Titanium's solid matte silver magnesium-alloy body with the Powerbook's white limned styling. From the very outset this makes the AStone one visually appealing notebook.

Make no mistake, this is one heavyweight of a notebook. The 3.3kg of the Satellite 2800 accounts for some of this, but otherwise it applies to some of the exceptional features found on this model.

For the first time since the fourth quarter of 2001, notebook manufacturer Toshiba has lost its top market share position, knocked off in Q2 this year by HP.

Alienware are fairly new to Australian shores, but for any PC-addict it's been hard to avoid their familiar little-green-men styling on the internet where Alienware cases are extremely popular among case-modding and PC-styling communities. They're finally here now, and the Area-51m 7700 is the first product through the PC Authority Labs doors.

The D900T has to be one the most impressively kitted out notebooks we've ever reviewed. Now, before you go running off with a fist full of readies, this notebook isn't available as such to the general public. Rather, resellers of Todaytech's notebooks can order them in whatever configuration you want. Or if you'd rather -- and we quite like this option -- you can order the notebook stripped of most options, and configure your own from spare parts or cheaper parts if you think you can do better on pricing.

Stylish and packed with features, it is not the cheapest 12 inch notebook available. This said, if you simply must have the features on offer inside this 'book, then this notebook does it all with style.

MSI's MegaBook L61OI lives up to its 'mega' moniker with a large 15.4-inch widescreen TFT, desktop CPU, excellent graphics and pumping audio. The model we looked at was a pre-production prototype notebook and as such was a little shaky and did not come with all the inclusions a final model will have. As a proof of concept, however, the notebook is quite good.

The Excel G736 notebook from Protac is a desktop replacement, and as well as better-than-normal notebook specifications it also comes with the other traditional trapping of a desktop replacement notebook: it's big, it's chunky, and it's heavy.

Just where do you start? Best point would be to introduce this Vaio as the first commercial offering designed and built from the ground up for Windows XP. The next point is simply that this is the most visually stunning notebook we have seen in a long time.

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.

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.

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.

The JoyBook 8000 marks the first attempt by BenQ to enter what some might argue is a crowded notebook market. BenQ's stance on the JoyBook is different from other notebook manufacturers though, as it won't be selling the JoyBook as 'just another notebook', but will instead market it totally as a digital lifestyle product.

A year ago you would have been laughed at for dreaming of a notebook clocking in at 1GHz. But the 1GHz mobile processor duly arrived midyear, leaving us pondering what the next step was.

While the build quality of the ASUS A4000L is good and sturdy, this notebook is much larger than the others featured in our roundup.

When it comes to notebooks, there are a few different flavours with their own specialties.  The trick to purchasing the right notebook is to know your needs and the intended purposes of the unit so you can properly match the correct machine with your requirements.

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.

It’s an odd gambit business-wise: align your own brand with that of another. But for Acer, the one-off team-up with Ferrari to brand and produce the Acer Ferrari 3000 notebook has resulted in a stunning product.