Equipped with an Intel dual-core 1.83GHz CPU, 512Mbytes of DDR2 RAM and the 945GM chipset, the notebook proved itself a speedy performer - almost as fast in fact as the more expensive Asus Lamborghini.

Has a little of everything; good performance, rugged build quality and an attractive price.

The second half of this display tag team, the Asus' LCD screen, is far more impressive however. At its native 1400 x 1050 pixel resolution, text is very sharp and as a result working with the VX1 over long periods of time should pose no problems. This ...

Sleek looks, strong audio, quick application performance, quality LCD.

Basic gaming performance, expensive.

An excellent choice for style conscious users, but perhaps a little disappointing for those that demand top-performance as well.

The next issue relates to the keyboard in that the keys are small and completely flat and therefore require a fair amount of effort to press down before they register a keystroke. This makes inputting data slow and cumbersome. Another glaring omission ...

A pricey gadget that's best suited to act as a portable hard drive or photo viewer and not much else.

Getting down to its benchmark numbers, the Toshiba is super fast. It returned the highest PCMark scores and though it scored less than the Dell in terms of games, it's by no means slow.

Though the Toshiba is an expensive beast, it is the most capable notebook here in terms of performance, features and support for future formats.

In terms of performance however, the LG came alive. The numbers it returned in PCMark 2005's CPU, memory and hard drive benchmarks were very respectable and fell behind only the $1270 more expensive Toshiba Qosmio.

Although it isn't quite the inch-perfect entertainment mogul it really aspires to be, the S1 is packed with application crunching power.

The notebook was better at tackling games than apps in our tests, as it returned the lowest numbers in PCMark's CPU, memory and hard drive tests.

This Asus is, overall, a competent desktop replacement machine that can tackle almost anything you might want to throw at it.

Dell also claims this notebook is Windows Vista ready, so if you're worried about support for Microsoft's future OS, this machine has it covered.

Fast apps machine, excellent battery life, comfortable, numerous security options.

No DVD writer, heavy, tight viewing angles.

A versatile notebook offering a valuable combination of speed, security and longevity.

There's also a hard drive shock protection system, similar in function to that supplied with the Toshiba Portege R200, but thankfully, Lenovo's system isn't quite as enthusiastic when it comes to detecting shocks and 'parking' the hard drive's heads!

If you can look past its rather average battery life, the Thinkpad X41 is a very solid product that we're sure can go the distance and then a little further.

In our benchmark tests the Versa performed reasonably well, with a respectable second place in our battery test.

Though it's relatively heavy compared to the competition, if security is a key concern then the Versa S950 is well worth your serious consideration.

Thanks to its speedy components, the nc4200 walked away with decent test numbers. Its scores of 2989 and 3271 were the second and third highest in PCMark2005's CPU and hard drive tests. The only area in which the HP stumbled was with regards our ...

An enticing proposition with good looks, feel and performance. The only downside is its battery life, which mightn't suit true road warriors.