Great ergonomics are let down by a few mediocre components and limited portability. But some features will tempt many.

A notebook fortress to equip your workforce with confidence, but sub-par performance.

We heard that Apple may be changing its slogan from “Think Different” to “CONFORM!”

Great looks, a good software bundle and hardware that almost completes the package.

Small but packed with features, this Lifebook is a stunner.

An excellent mid-range laptop for work, but not fun.

Everybody, who hasn’t already got one, wants a decent laptop.

The Acer Aspire 1692 WLMi is a story of compromises; a +/-/RAM dual layer burner and gigabit Ethernet are offset by Windows XP Home, only 512MB of RAM and the slowest processor and hard disk of the bunch.

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.

Widescreen is still one of the flavours of the month for notebooks and plenty of users are opting to banish boring old 4:3 aspect ratio LCD panels to the land of wind and ghosts.

The Acer has all the bells and whistles you're going to need as a student, or mobile office worker; and then some.

Powerful laptops have to be big, bulky and ugly, right? Not necessarily. Samsung's new line of laptops is proving that portability, style and performance are not necessarily mutually exclusive.

The look of the HP Compaq NC6000_106 is pure business with its black casing and silver trim. It's also one of the heavier laptops at 2.9kg.

Dell's reputation at providing reasonably priced capable 'books shines through in the 510M - the cheapest notebook on test this month.

The Portege A200 also has many of the necessary features we would expect in an education notebook, including LAN and modem ports, two USB ports, a DVD-ROM, and 802.11b/g with an wireless on/off switch.

Hallmark has opted to take advantage of Intel’s Extreme Graphics 2 integrated shared graphics, taking up to 64MB of video memory from the on-board 512MB of PC2700 DDR to power the display. While not designed for gaming, it did manage to churn out almost 3000 points in 3DMark01SE with some help from its Pentium M 1.6GHz CPU.

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.

With a price beaten only by Apple's iBook, Targa's offering to the multimedia market segment could easily be confused for their budget line of products. Clocking in at only 1.5GHz, this isn't the beefiest CPU in our roundup, but the 64MB of dedicated video memory, based on ATIs Mobility RADEON 9600 generation GPU, helped carry it through.

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.

The BenQ Joybook 7000 v07 is a multimedia PC with some MCE-like abilities. It comes loaded with QMedia Center - another MCE clone - and a PCMCIA-sized remote. QMedia operates much like MCE in that there is a main page – coloured BenQ purple of course - from which the usual Pictures and Videos icons enable navigation of the user’s media files.