Acer’s Aspire one makes a splash. A great keyboard, a fine screen and a keen price make for a superb mini-laptop

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

Dell's long awaited entry into the Eee-class notebook market is a top effort, though not perfect.

You've seen our first impressions, now here's our full review. Good-looking, usable and keenly priced but, for now at least, poor performance and battery life give the Eee the edge

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

A stylish mobile way to access the web, but it’s crying out for mobile data capability.

We're worried about the damn hot operating temperature, but otherwise we're blown away by this mini notebook.

We've put both mini-notebooks through their paces, and while Linux fans may disagree, the winner is clear.

A retrograde step from its predecessor, but a super low price makes this dinky PC very desirable

Not very competitive on price, but there’s plenty of scope for performance

Impressive quality, considering the bargain basement price. We're talking sub $1000 here.

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

The $1000 PC was once regarded as the Holy Grail of computing, but now almost every manufacturer has one.

Producing a PC for under a thousand dollars will inevitably lead to compromises – do you go for a better screen or more processing power?

The Acer Aspire SA20 is a machine built on a budget and it performs accordingly.

Shuttle's SB95P is a small form factor (SFF) aimed at the enthusiast/gamer market, and it takes advantage of the i925 iteration of PCI-E. Though Shuttle are known for their XPC’s striking looks, in this case the colour scheme is nothing to write home about: is gun-metal anyone's favourite colour?

Like clowns piling out of the other kind of Mini, you’ll be similarly surprised at how much Apple has managed to squeeze into the Mac mini.

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.

We reviewed the MegaPC180's predecessor, the Mega651, in September last year (Issue 70, page 46) and were fairly impressed with the way this unit handled for a first generation crossover Hi-Fi/PC. The key to digital convergence is seamless integration and MSI has gone a few extra steps in the right direction to help with this changeover.