A USB-powered mini-monitor, the 710S folds quick (3 seconds), packs light (1.3 pounds), and offers just enough display space (7 inches, diagonally) to make it worth traveling with. Even if you're packing a luxurious 17-inch laptop, all of us can agree ...

When it's folded, this collapsible, portable monitor is trimmer than an Olsen twin - less than 2 inches thick. The unit quickly swivels between portrait and landscape orientation. Adequately bright, crisp screen (800 x 480). PC- and Mac-friendly. The ...

Cheap, plasticky housing. Tiny 7-inch screen is impractical for Word documents, semi-eh for video streams, totally meh for Photoshop

, the U110 - with the same 10-inch screen, familiar ports and respectable, but now industry-standard, 1.6-GHz Atom processor - isn't quite as strong an offering. But the glass isn't half empty. This reasonably priced "upgrade" dispenses a double dose ...

Battery lasts nine hours. Solid 1.6-GHz Intel Atom processor. USB jacks on both sides. Comes standard with 1 GB of RAM, 160-GB hard drive, and 1.3-MP webcam

Cramped period and comma keys. 10-inch display is OK for Word, less OK for porn - er, media. Big battery boosts weight by 50 percent

The littlest MacBook Pro finally gets all the features of its larger brethren, making it pound for pound one of the most impressive laptops on the market today. For starters, the aluminum unibody construction is solid to an extreme: There's no wiggle ...

Seriously solid unibody design shrunk down to more portable proportions. Dazzling performance for a machine this small (just 4.5 pounds). SD card slot. Love the backlit keys

Teensy keyboard, puny arrow keys. LCD could be brighter. Nonremovable battery doesn't last "all day" as advertised (reality: not quite four hours with a DVD going)

Geeks might know BFG Tech as a veteran graphics-card maker. Now the hardware manufacturer is moving into high-end laptops. Its first effort at portable computer is nothing if not record-breaking. At 13 pounds, the Deimos X-10 is the heaviest laptop we ...

Killer performance - absolutely unbeaten to date. Easy-typing keyboard with lots of room (as you'd expect with 18.4 inches of screen space). Includes free backpack

Thigh-crushing weight and soul-crushing ugliness. With all this space, we expect a few more ports (just four USBs, no DisplayPort). Optical drive difficult to get to ; stutters strangely on DVD playback. Utterly useless touchpad - bring a mouse

There's so much to like in HP's new Pavilion dm3 that it's hard to know where to start. Perhaps with the looks: The aluminum and magnesium case looks cool, totally modern, and though it's got some plastic components (most notably the underside), it ...

Slim, stylish and sturdy. Outstanding keyboard. Four USB ports (plus HDMI and an SD card slot) is a rarity in a machine this portable. Battery is graced with amazing life

Awful, awful touchpad (it's an ongoing problem with HP Pavilion notebooks.) At 4.2 pounds, heavy for this category. Careful you don't step in the shovelware

Now that the hungry maw of Hewlett-Packard has devoured Voodoo, the company has been hard at work splicing "Voodoo DNA" into its mainstream products. Here's one result: A laptop that looks a lot like an HP Pavilion but carries the high price of a ...

Good looks and solid performance ... what's not to like? Textured palm-rest pattern evokes Death Star motif ... like a million voices crying out in unison, then suddenly silenced

Only two USB ports. Bright screen, but hardly an "unparalleled viewing experience." Chiclet keyboard awkward at first. Middling battery life (2 hours, 10 minutes). Undersized arrow keys. Higher price than Cypress Hill concert

Lenovo loves to push and prod at the boundaries of notebook technology. Sometimes these results are fascinating (as with the dual-screen ThinkPad W700ds). And sometimes they fall flat, as is the case with the ThinkPad T400s with multitouch hardware.

Lovely textured trackpad (ironically redundant given the multitouch screen). Still offers solid ThinkPad design and sturdiness. Turns Paint into Fingerpaint - fun

Huge price markup for touch features. Massive performance, weight and battery hit. Stretching to use multitouch screen is uncomfortable for more than a few seconds, making extended touch usage nearly impossible and rarely accurate

Take MSI's impressive MacBook Air knockoff, the X340, and gently stretch it out another couple of inches. Voila, you have the X600, a 15.6-inch version of the 13.4-inch X340.

Super slim profile and a 15.6-inch LCD (with good graphics) are a great combination. Price includes a free optical drive. Amazing amount of hard drive space. Under five pounds

Keypad/keyboard mashup is a horrendous design error. Slight bendiness in the LCD panel. Mostly plastic construction

What kind of a computer did you buy when your eye is on the bottom line and you didn't give a damn about aesthetics? No brainer: Your top choice was a Dell.

Amazingly slim. Gorgeous screen and, for the most part, attractive design. Sturdy build

Difficult to open. Keyboard backlighting ineffective at many angles, making it difficult to read the keys. No memory card slot

One hates to judge too harshly, but someone at Toshiba didn't get the memo that with a thin and light computer, the operative descriptors are both "thin" and "light."

Backlit keyboard and slot-loading DVD are impressive on a sub-$1,000 notebook. Decent value for the performance. Great battery life

One of the ugliest laptops we've seen in recent memory. Unwieldy and badly balanced. Keyboard offers minimal travel