In a world filled with gorgeous Sony, Apple and even Dell laptops, a sober, matte black machine aimed at consumers has to be truly special to turn heads. The IdeaPad Y430 is a well-built Centrino 2 machine that lacks nothing in the way of features, speed or value

An inexpensive laptop that, when it comes to style and quality, more than punches above its weight

A decent notebook but too expensive for the features on offer.

A good first stab at the semi-ruggedised laptop market. It isn’t up to the tough standards of others, though.

A good laptop for business, with superb design touches but some unfortunate omissions.

It’s great value and will tempt some people thanks to its size and multimedia abilities.

Fast, well built and superbly featured - our business laptop of choice.

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.

For those users after the shift away from a Microsoft world to an OS X platform, Apple have got a deal for you. Starting at a mere $1699, you can pick up an G4 iBook capable of more than just entertainment uses.

Slightly less sturdy than previous Dell models we have seen, the D500 is finished in attractive silver bezel housing, the keyboard is comfortable to use and offers all the functionality of standard-sized desktop keyboards.

Looking quite a lot like what I imagined the son of Apple's Titanium and Powerbook lines of notebooks would turn out, the AStone notebook features both the Titanium's solid matte silver magnesium-alloy body with the Powerbook's white limned styling. From the very outset this makes the AStone one visually appealing notebook.

With the slow Australian take-off of the Centrino platform, higher spec, slightly larger form factored units are making their way into the marketplace. Intel's Pentium-M processors are ramping up in speed, now available in 1.7GHz values and still impressing.

Intel’s push on Centrino notebook branding has only made it so far in the six months since its introduction. So far prices have been high for Centrino notebooks, although Emagen looks set to change this mindset, now offering the N1000 model as a cost-effective alternative option to top of the line name brand notebooks with all the bells and whistles.

If the Efio 2617 looks familiar, it-s because it is almost identical to the Hi-Grade Notino R5400 (December 2002, page 49).