Well priced, with a robust chassis and touchscreen option that make it a good choice for classroom use, and any one else wanting a netbook that's a little bit different

Superb build quality, battery life and usability – quite simply the best netbook around

Neither cheap nor beautiful, MSI’s Atom powered nettop is sadly second among equals.

If you can’t stretch to the Samsung N110, the 1005HA makes an excellent lower-cost alternative

Not the most attractive, but this Eee PC defies expectations. Another machine that's going onto our netbook shopping shortlist

A good quality netbook pipped at the post by its own stablemates.

A couple of nifty gimmicks and an extended warranty help give this netbook the boost that its ergonomics don’t.

There’s a lot to like, but it doesn’t stand out from the crowd.

A startling achievement: a highly capable mini-laptop for under $700. Only mediocre battery life mars its appeal.

An improvement over the Eee PC 900, with longer battery life and sleeker looks – but its rivals are catching up

Our pics and first impressions of the hotly anticipated ultra-cheapie, and yes, it's better than the Eee in several ways.

The Shuttle XPC is an icon of SFF design, and there are as many iterations as there are chipsets.

This is one nice looking white plastic and aluminium barebones system, with smooth lines and compact minimalism. Being a SFF PC makes ventilation vital, and the Kloss is built from the new BTX standard, which was designed with thermal effectiveness in mind.

In the ever bloating world of mini barebones PCs there is a wide range of build quality and internal design to be witnessed. AOpen has been in the market for a while now, and the XC cube edition is one of the better designed systems in an area where quality can vary wildly from brand to brand.

Synonymous with the barebones market, Shuttle has carved a niche by providing enthusiasts exactly what they crave, but in mini form factored systems.

Our Labs Winner this month represents what a mini barebones PC should be: it's small yet easily accessible; it's attractive, but has a quality build; and it has all the features you need for a full PC or a media centre.

Swiping the hardware from the PC Authority test bench, we went about putting together our Shuttle XPC. Immediately we were confronted by one of the idiosyncrasies of small form factor PCs: squeezing all the hardware in the tiny space inside.