Price: Reviewed system approx $5099; basic barebone $2950

Todaytech's D900T is the Double Whopper with Cheese of the notebook world. It's a massive desktop replacement in every sense of the word, but it's swollen with meaty goodness inside, rather than fat and filler. Which is good, considering the D900T alone weighs a massive 5.67kg, and with the power brick 6.75kg -- it's good to know you're lugging something worthwhile while you strain with that weight.

The reviewed D900T comes with a desktop socket LGA775 3.0GHz Pentium 4 processor, an huge 1.5GB of DDR RAM, two 60GB 2.5in SATA Fujitsu hard drives in mirrored RAID configuration, a DVD-RW drive and a 256MB NVIDIA GeForce Go 6800 graphics card and 17in widescreen display with a 1440 x 900 native resolution.

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.

The D900T sent into us for review was less a finished available product, and more a showcase of what is possible. As such, the D900T was a terrifying beast of a notebook, but there was still leeway for improvement. You could cram in more RAM, RAID array two 80GB 2.5in drives for a 160GB stripe, pop in a dual-layer burner, and most importantly, jam in a 3.8GHz processor. Then you could upgrade the screen to a WXSGA model with anti-glare coating and a native resolution of 1680 x 1050.

Alternatively, you could also dumb-down the components a little. This is the beauty of Todaytech's BYON (build-your-own-notebook) model: you (or the reseller), are able to configure the system as required. It's applying the whitebox PC model to notebooks: hence the 'whitebook' moniker.

All of the major components -- RAM, CPU and hard drives -- are easily user-swappable, and there's no fiddling around trying to lever the keyboard up to get at the notebook's innards. All of the Todaytech whitebooks are designed so that you can access the goodies from the base of the notebook, and while it's not tool-less, it only takes minutes to lay the thing bare. This aspect of the design is exemplary.

The rest of the design is utilitarian -- it's a basic looking notebook with some funky features tacked on, such as the blue LED illuminated digital clock on the front panel, plus the controls for operating the CD drive (including a shuffle button) when the unit's powered down. Otherwise the outer is a fairly standard fare, but it's the ability to create an insane notebook on the inside, plus the crazy wealth of ports (four USB 2.0, two mini-FireWire, DVI out) that make this a truly standout system.