We're almost blasé about ultraportables these days, but opening the notus box we couldn't help but get a little excited. The 12.1inch screen is sleek - it's not Mac Air thin (or X300 for that matter), but it still noticeably skinnier than other similar size rivals like the Fujitsu P8010 (which we've compared it with in the pics).

The notus is feather light at 1.1Kg, but the drawcard here is battery life. Zepto grabbed attention when it first announced the notus, boasting that the Intel McCaslin processor would mean a power reduction of 50% on similar notebooks. It's got a 6 cell battery, so it's likely to be good.

The Zepto notus on the left, the Fujitsu P8010 on the right (with optical drive)

Why go for this over the Eee? For a start you get an 80GB hard drive. It's also a bigger keyboard and screen than the HP Mini-Note, and if the claims are true, much better battery life. There's no external drive, but it looks like optical is on the way out for portables anyway. Price is $1,599, or $1897 with an optional external drive.

Look, a keyboard without insanely annoying flat keys (hello Vaio), or tiny keys (hello Eee PC)

Interestingly, Zepto will ship the notus without Vista, if you want.