Great for executives on the move thanks to size and decent battery life, but the missing optical drive disappoints

Great for executives on the move thanks to size and decent battery life, but the missing optical drive disappoints.

A good-looking, ergonomically excellent laptop with a wealth of multimedia capabilities for home users.

Despite some welcome additions and good components, this Acer notebook is left wanting.

It's the return of the twin graphics chip powered laptop, but this time Core2 Duo power is under the hood.

An impressive attempt at a good-value portable PC, but the ergonomics let it down.

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

It’s one of the thinnest laptops available and it looks stunning, with an industry first up its sleeve.

Look what four grand can buy you.

A good-value and very powerful system that will appeal to those seeking ultimate performance.

Sony does it again with a Notebook to die for.

Aztec’s PC is a very different take on our $4000 PC A-List challenge.

We put out the call to Australia’s white box PC manufacturers for a good high-end $4000 PC and PC Express was the first to respond.

While many ultraportable laptops, like the Toshiba R200 go all out to get size and weight to an absolute minimum, a great deal of usability is often sacrificed – the X505 is impractically small for constant daily usage while the R200 has limited battery sizes.

The 9300 is reminiscent of its predecessor, the Inspiron 9100, which was pitched squarely at power users and gamers looking for plenty of grunt. This product refresh takes it one step further by using a mobile processor rather than the desktop CPU found in the 9100.

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.

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.

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.

If you're after an ultra portable, this isn't the notebook for you. If you're after a large form factored portable desktop replacement, this could be the ticket. This behemoth of a notebook features a 17-inch widescreen display and a footprint to match.

This rather small Centrino-powered notebook from Fujitsu has been designed for students and the hip-crowd; those that want something that's capable of work and entertainment, is not too large or heavy to carry, and that can easily balance on a café table between text books and a hot latte.