Any way you look at it, ITC’s Millennia 7350 is a monster. Under the bonnet is an Intel Pentium 3.6GHz desktop processor, 2GB of RAM and an NVIDIA GeForce Go 6800 Ultra 256MB graphics chip. This all conspired to return a whopping 3DMark05 score of 5077 and a high PCMark04 benchmark of 5266. The graphics chip can be upgraded too.

But it comes at a price. This 17in widescreen beast costs $1000 more than last month’s powerful notebook roundup winner, Pioneer’s DreamBook Power 900 (see August 2005, page 58). Built using the same, large Clevo chassis, the Millennia weighs in at a whopping 5.6kg, plus 1.2kg for the power supply. A battery life of one hour flat, whatever you’re doing, further limits portability.

It runs Windows XP Media Center Edition complete with analog TV tuner and full-sized MCE remote control, letting you record TV on to two 5400rpm 80GB hard disks running in RAID 0. This gives a massive 160GB of fast storage – huge for a notebook. It also sports a DVI connector (with VGA adaptor) and S-Video out, composite and S-Video in. There’s even a built-in webcam and mic.

The 1920 x 1200 display might not be technically great but few will grumble with its performance when watching films or playing games. The front multimedia buttons are handy and allow you to both play music and watch DVDs without booting into Windows. The speakers give a rich and well-rounded sound though they don’t get as loud as we’d have hoped.

This is unfortunate as anything that could drown out the oppressive cooling fan noise would be useful – the racket is one serious downside to this beast.

If you fancy the power of a desktop computer that can be tidied away into a drawer or occasionally moved around, the 7350 is a great choice. There’s little that can touch it for raw power and if you’re paying this much for a laptop, the premium over the Pioneer is well worth paying.