Acer has taken a different tack to IBM with its version of Centrino. Whereas the ThinkPad focused on being small and portable, the TravelMate 800 is a better-featured notebook with a 1.6GHz processor, 15in display and a fast graphics chip.

As with the ThinkPad, the TravelMate produced good general performance – more than adequate for day-to-day business use, and competitive with a 2GHz P4-M in most tests. Its battery life wasn't as jaw-droppingly impressive as the IBM, but still excellent at four hours 25 minutes. Acer's ‘book has one important advantage over the ThinkPad – a far superior graphics chipset. It uses a MOBILITY RADEON 9000, has DirectX 8 compliance and is significantly speedier than the 7500 model sported by the IBM. The TravelMate 800 is an excellent example of quality construction. It's made of smooth curves and beats all the other notebooks we tested this month in terms of class. While the screen makes it a larger ‘book than the ThinkPad, on the whole it's still reasonably thin – and far more portable than most of its P4 competitors.

However, the keyboard is smaller than it needs to be, and the small keys that result are certain to frustrate larger-fingered folk.

If you can look beyond these minor issues though, you'll find the TravelMate 800 is one stellar little notebook.