Designed with portability in mind, this notebook is slim, sexy and versatile, enabling basic office usage, DVD playback or even some weekend gaming.

Running your hand down the left hand side of the unit you'll find an S-video output and three sensibly placed USB 2.0 ports towards the front of the chassis, stopping you from having to fumble around behind the unit to plug in additional peripherals such as printers, scanners or digital cameras. Even closer to the user on the same side we find a PCMCIA bay and SD removable memory socket as well as a single 4-pin FireWire socket for DV cams or external hard drives.  Completely legacy free, the right side boasts another USB port, slim combo drive and audio sockets for headphones and a microphone input.

Included is a manual volume adjustment dial for the headphones, stopping you having to alter it through the operating system when listening to music. Unfortunately the speakers are front mounted under the lip of the base of the unit and while it's audible on the desktop, you'll find your sound muffled when being used in your lap.

Packing some serious hardware, this very portable notebook features an Intel 1.5GHz processor, 512MB of DDR, wireless 802.11^module and a 64MB ATI RADEON MOBILITY 9600 graphics card capable of just under 10,000 3DMarks in the default resolution - enough grunt to run even the latest games at reasonable framerate. Gigabyte's 4:3 aspect ratio 15in SXGA will comfortably run 1400x1050 resolution and makes for a great marriage of quality and size. For those after the widescreen look, Gigabyte also has a 16:10 15.4in model notebook available.

The bundled extras with this notebook are quite good, including an optical mouse, carry bag with plenty of compartment room, PowerDVD, Easy CD creator and Norton Antivirus all of which will have you up and creating or playing back discs while protecting your system out of the box.