Apple’s greenest notebook ever is also one of its best. The MacBook Pro is overpriced, but you certainly get a powerful and exquisitely designed machine for your hard-earned cash. It’s not perfect, but using it is a largely positive experience on the whole.

The NEC Versa E6510-2505DR is a very cost-effective and powerful machine that is difficult to fault. Although the faux leather looks and feels fake and the non-standard keyboard may occasionally cause typing errors, users who can look past these faults will find it to be an excellent device.

This is a powerful mid-range all-purpose notebook that is well worth looking at, as long as you can stand carting around a 3kg laptop.

It might not be fast, but it sure is affordable. At under $700, this 15.4in notebook is ideal for students, workers, anyone really, who wants a basic machine for perusing the Web and typing up documents, or even for viewing and storing digital photos.

The Toshiba Satellite Pro A300 is a unit that sits comfortably between the entry-level and mid-range notebook categories, featuring an excellent range of expansion ports and decent performance when balanced against its price tag. What lets it down is the dull design.

Acer's Aspire 4920G is a good all purpose notebook. It doesn't excel at any one thing, but for users wanting a little gaming, movie watching and general desktop PC activities, crammed into a stylish package, it is a strong contender.

Pioneer has definitely aimed for the performance market with its DreamBook Light 822 notebook, which is the most powerful notebook we looked at this month. Running an Intel Core Duo T2500 (2GHz) processor and 1GB (2x 512MB) of DDR2 533MHz RAM, the 14in DreamBook pulled off an impressive score of 97 in PC WorldBench 5 and 17,469 in 3DMark 2001 SE. These results place the DreamBook above other notebooks in its price range.

If you don't want to play lots of games and need a solid notebook for office tasks, the Z61t should fit the bill quite nicely.

The VAIO VGN-CR13G is a reasonably solid, if unspectacular, notebook that features a lovely design and reasonable specifications. A decent choice if you are after an all-purpose machine.

They've finally done it — the Sony VAIO VGN-Z16GN/B is a great mix of power and style for those who can swallow the $2999 price tag. Users will just have to make sure they treat it carefully, especially when dealing with the screen.

This notebook has its problems and wont suit everyone, but its performances its still worthy.

Although there's a notable premium on the solid-state hard drive and ultra-portables don't often come cheap anyway, this is a good little buy. It's got enough power to handle the most basic tasks and its implementation of flash memory should please those wanting to be on the cutting edge.