A worthy alternative to Toshiba's flagship G40, the Qosmio F40 is a well built and useful entertainment machine.

Although it didn't score as well as we'd hoped in WorldBench 6, the gaming results were good and the inclusion of an HD-DVD-R drive is an excellent bonus.

Even though we respect ASUS for being innovative with its notebook designs, the ASUS F6V-3P182E with its "musk" scent is too whiffy. But if you can get past the smell, a decent 13.3in notebook can be yours for $1599.

With a simple, but thoughtful feature set, a solid build and a classy design there's little to complain about. While the CR13G/B isn't the top of the game, it is a very nice notebook.

This is a value-priced power notebook that's well geared towards multimedia use.

It's very difficult to criticise the Lenovo ThinkPad X301 without sounding like a nitpicker. This is a fantastic and well-engineered notebook that has plenty of features and looks very attractive. The only substantial issues are the high price tag, the lower than average battery life and the problematic latch.

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.

If you’re looking for a desktop replacement with processing power, plenty of storage, an excellent screen and great connectivity options then the Dell Studio 17 (1735) is a hard product to beat.

This mid-sized widescreen has plenty of power and a sizable, speedy hard disk, and it's backed by a three-year warranty.

If you can fork out the cash and don’t mind the design, then the Sony Vaio VGN-FW17GU is a well-performing unit that features a Blu-ray burner.

The Toshiba Tecra A10's excellent CPU is wasted thanks to a puny 1GB of RAM. If you want a decent machine with a sub-$1500 price tag, then this is a device worth considering — as long as you upgrade the memory.

If you don’t mind your laptop attracting more attention than you, the HP DV5-1010TX_01 is a fast but heavy unit that comes with a built-in TV tuner and Blu-ray player for a reasonable price.