OpenBook is Australian distributor, BlueChip IT’s notebook brand and the Z62F is the company’s first Centrino Duo model. It has a 14.1-inch widescreen display with a 1280 x 800 resolution which is fine for most applications but may leave movie and digital photo enthusiasts nonplussed when it comes to colour reproduction. Viewing angles strike a close balance between sharing a movie with a friend and preventing people sitting beside you peering at your work.

In terms of other ergonomics, the keyboard is slightly stiff but still crisp and comfortable to use. The mouse is accurate and the buttons are well-weighted. The quiet and tinny speakers are all that let the side down.

Under the hood is a 2GHz Core Duo T2500 chip with 1GB of PC5300 DDR2 RAM. These coupled with an excellent 120GB hard disk managed to score 0.95 in our benchmarks – just five percent slower than our speedy reference desktop Pentium D 840 system – so you’ll be able to do some processor intensive tasks on the move. However, there’s no 3D chip, only Intel’s integrated graphics, so you can forget playing games.

At 2.6KG it’s modestly portable, not aided much by a modest battery life score of one hour 29 minutes in our intensive use test though four hours in our light-use test was more impressive.

Connectivity options are very good, however. Along with four USB 2 ports (all on the right hand side), mini FireWire and a PC card slot, there’s Gigabit Ethernet, BlueTooth and 802.11a/b/g WLAN. For video there’s the standard VGA and S-Video slots and at the front is a memory card reader which supports SD/MMC and Memory Sticks and two audio jacks.

Other features included a dual-layer DVD-RAM and a 1.3-megapixel webcam in the top of the lid. Bundled software includes CyberLink’s PowerDVD (branded as Asus DVD), PowerDirector, Medi@Show and Nero Express. We’re happy to see Windows XP Professional included too.

At two years RTB the warranty is modest which means there’s little about this notebook that is particularly mould-breaking or exciting beyond the large hard disk and wireless connections. It’s a solid enough notebook and offers a few extra features to Dell’s 630m. However, Dell’s notebook comes with a superior onsite warranty, looks better and costs a whopping $600 less. Even then, we’d recommend plumping for the A-Listed Acer Aspire 5672WLMi which won last month’s group test as this offers similar performance, better features and still saves you almost $300.