A strong, lightweight laptop, the Dell Inspiron 700m has a neat wide-aspect screen. All that mars the notebook is a slightly cramped keyboard, an annoying optical drive button and a short battery life.

If you're looking for top comfort and full features in an ultraportable, you'll find them all in the XPS M1210.

Spring for the extra battery (at an extra charge) to add needed life to this otherwise fine and very light travelling companion.

While we love the size and weight of this netbook, its keyboard is very hard to type on due to the non-standard key layout.

The Vostro 1200 is a good choice at a smart price for the travelling business user with good processing power, Wi-Fi connectivity and battery life, despite being let-down by some design issues.

The Flybook VM's lifting screen is very useful and the unit is comfortable to use overall. It has enough power for typical office applications and even Photoshop, and its screen produced rich colours. We wish it had at least one more USB port and an SD card reader. Apart from that, we think this is a great choice for anyone after a comfortable ultraportable unit.

The tiny Flybook V5 is aimed squarely at the business user. It's very mobile, has 3G capability and it can function as a tablet PC. However, it's a hard-to-use laptop and it's missing some useful tablet features, such as a dedicated button for rotating the screen.

Although it isn't a bad unit in its own right, the Fujitsu doesn't shine as well as it should given its budget competitors and high price point. If you're looking for a unit that has a great touch screen, a fast Intel Atom processor and great connectivity, you're probably better off waiting a month until the upgraded 3G model reaches Australia.

If you consider battery life and light weight the most important laptop criteria, give the LifeBook P7010 a close look. You could probably live with this 1.5-kilogram unit's less-than-perfect keyboard and screen.

The Fujitsu LifeBook P7120 is an attractive and cleverly designed notebook with all the bells and whistles of some much more expensive models.

There's no doubt this unit is ultraportable and it did well in our battery testing, but with a $5499 price tag it's just too expensive.

It's rare to find a notebook as versatile as the LifeBook P1610. There are certainly compromises to be made for its tiny frame and convertible design, but if blistering performance isn't essential, the P1610 is well worth a look.