This month's winner, the A510 from Targa well and truly trounced the competitors this month, with the exception of Dell who trailed by only three points.

Targa's scores show that you can still get a high performing notebook on show with 3434 PCMarks while still managing to keep the cost down. While it was still slightly more expensive than the Dell and ASUS, both of which make some compromises under the hood, the added grunt paid off. While the inclusion of dedicated video memory is ancillary to our quest for the best education notebook, at this price it is a very attractive added extra and makes it either recyclable within a business or perfect for weekend downtime gaming.

While we're talking features, the Targa isn't perfect: it weighs in at a fairly bulky 3kg and has only a combination DVD-ROM/CD-RW optical drive rather than a DVD burner as found in other models. However, given the price and performance, the feature set doesn't drag down the overall attractiveness of the notebook.

One of the biggest considerations for users after a mobile workstation or desktop is running time. Targa again proved its mettle by staying operational and working for well over 4 hours, enough time for lectures, meetings and conferences if you travel with your power adaptor. Lowering your monitor brightness will further improve your running time, in some cases adding over an hour if you don't mind it a bit dark indoors, but it shouldn't be a problem outdoors.

It is worth mentioning that Targa was the only notebook to ship with an alternative office package, bundling NextOffice 8 standard (based on the OpenOffice kernel). While many would expect Microsoft Office as standard, given the free and fully featured Labs Winning OpenOffice, you're certainly not losing out by cutting commercial office suites out of the package.

Overall, this Labs Winner represents a better combination of performance, flexibility and features than it competitors this month.