Designed from the ground up to cater for all computer users, this notebook is a great all round performer. While many of the units we review are productivity notebooks designed for work first with an afterthought given to play, Digital Star has given a great deal of attention to general home users and multimedia applications. Don't get us wrong, it's certainly capable of productivity work but gaming, DV capture, editing and multiformat DVD writing is catered for here.

Although more common with widescreen 15.4-inch TFT panels, this notebook supports a 1440 x 1050 4:3 aspect ratio, giving you plenty of desktop or spreadsheet display space. These graphics come courtesy of 128MB of dedicated video memory from ATI's RADEON MOBILITY 9700, currently the highest spec mobile GPU available and capable of tackling high end games on mobile platforms.

Running 3DMark01SE Pro, it returned an impressive 10,006 marks in the default 1024 x 768 resolution and a very playable 6271 marks with four anti-aliasing samples enabled. On the application side, it produced a score 3342 in PCMark04 which shows this notebook to be very capable with both office productivity style applications as well as media encoding and decoding - both very important if you plan on using a machine like this for DV editing or capture via the rear-mounted 4-pin FireWire port.

Regarding ports, it's almost entirely legacy-free. It features only a single parallel interface and D-sub monitor output. This comes in addition to two USB 2.0 ports on the rear of the chassis, which is located alongside the RJ11 telephone line input and 10/100 Ethernet. The right hand side boasts a single PCMCIA port, IrDA, SD reader and an on/off switch for powering or disabling the integrated 802.11g wireless module.

Unfortunately, the optical drive is front mounted which makes it near impossible to eject the drive if using it on your lap, although the side mounted speakers eliminates the problem of muffled audio from your lap or loose clothing.

Overall, it's comfortable to operate, packs in high specifications, and performs well. It's a reasonably priced all-rounder that offers plenty of bang for your buck for all applications.