Another notebook to embrace the entertainment market and sell units with widescreen 16:10 aspect ratio displays, this PowerNote packs some serious hardware under the hood, pushing not only AMD's Mobile Athlon 64 3200+ processor, but also ATI's Mobility RADEON 9700 a 60GB, 7200rpm hard disk drive and a multiformat 4-speed DVD burner for disc creation on the go. This is impressive for such a reasonably sized form factor. While the software bundle and added extras are kept at a minimum, the PowerNote's real claim to fame is its good performance scores and reasonable pricing.

Playing second fiddle to Pioneer's notebook throughout the testing, it achieved excellent scores of  3994 PCMarks, a quite respectable 11595 3DMarks ,and a very playable 19.6 fps in Doom 3. This means it did amazingly well and performed on par with Acer's T620 desktop system and was only narrowly pipped by the SATO unit throughout.

Build quality is good and solid, giving the impression this is the sort of notebook road warriors or students could swing around and give everyday knocks without having too much to worry about. Unfortunately the rear of the LCD panel is not so sturdy. With only mild pressure the display shows sign of yielding, meaning you'll probably want to keep it away from other items in bags to stop from damaging your monitor should something heavy press against it for an extended period of time.

From a value point of view, this notebook offers more than enough grunt to game, play DVDs on or do some video editing. With the exception of Apple and Targa, no other unit of this specification calibre was able to match performance with the bordering on $4000 units, making this a catch for notebook shoppers with a limited budget. Keyboard layout is comfortable, the touchpad responsive and the three quick launch buttons handy for easily loading your web browser, email client and enabling or disabling the optional wireless module. If you're unwilling to go back to plain old 4:3 aspect ratio, but don't want to spend an absolute fortune for a notebook for work and home, this could well be it.