The Sony VAIO VGN-FE45G/W doesn't offer great battery life, but is very comfortable to use and has enough power under the hood to deal with everyday use and more.

The Presario V3000 is an attractively sleek and compact notebook slightly let down by its less-than-stellar battery life. However, for those who value design and portability over beefy specs, it remains an affordable and worthy purchase.

The Toshiba Satellite A100 is a solid notebook for the casual home user. It doesn't top the charts with its performance, but it offers just a little more than the core components.

A good price point, decent features and great performance make this notebook a good choice if you're after a desktop replacement.

The attractive Sony Vaio VGN-C25G/B can comfortably handle general computing tasks and multimedia applications. However, if you are looking to play modern games, you should look elsewhere.

Although the Acer Aspire 5613AWLMi has no definitively outstanding feature worth mentioning, the combination of its media controls, shortcuts, Acer Empowering Technology software, price and performance-results make it a nice machine to own.

HP's Pavilion tx1001 is not a powerful performer, but for a small premium you get the benefit of touch-screen functionality with your notebook. It still offers all the perks of the Pavilion range, but brings a new physical element to computing.

The Zepto look is stylish and has some power under the hood. It's a shame our model has now been superseded, but the features of this notebook are good and will soon carry across to the new Santa Rosa build. The only thing that we really didn't like about this notebook was the brightness of the screen and the less-rigid LCD panel.

The Toshiba Satellite P200 is a solid workhorse of a machine with plenty of processing power under the hood. While it suits as an all-purpose desktop replacement model, hardcore gamers will be left hamstrung by its average GPU.

While it's not at the top end of the latest Centrino Duo notebooks, it is a good performer and is well designed.

Although the HP Compaq 6710b is not at the top of the game, it's a good value for money option. The included software could have been a little more comprehensive, but this simple notebook still does what it needs to do reasonably well.

We like the new look and it's a reasonable performer, but we were disappointed by the speakers and the poor viewing angle on the screen. Ultimately this notebook is pleasant to use, but leaves you wondering what more it could have offered.