This post was written by Maureen Jones
Toshiba - Portégé A600-122 is the slightly heftier brother of the R500 series. It looks pretty good too in its all-silver finish, which is set off by a chrome Toshiba logo on the outside of the lid and inside by the matt black screen surround and chromed mouse buttons. The one thing that is very impressive about the A600-122 is its battery life. Despite its small stature, Toshiba has built in a good choice of optical drive in the form of a DVD Super Multi drive.
Acer’s - Aspire 6935G line-up currently has six models. The 844G32Bn model is a well equipped, stylish, desktop replacement notebook. The performance is good and will cope with the whims of the pre-installed Windows Vista Home Premium OS and any everyday application. Thankfully the audio sub-system helps with the movie watching experience, due mainly to Dolby Home Theatre virtual surround sound technology. In fact the only really disappointing thing about the Aspire 6935G is the battery life, and that’s not such an issue with something that weighs in at 3.8kg.
HP’s Mini 1000’s footprint is nearly identical to that of the earlier HP 2133 Mini-Note PC, measuring slightly wider and thinner, as per CNET review. The actual hands-on experience is the best of any Netbook tested so far, making it well worth a look for anyone interested in jumping into the Netbook arena, especially those who dread spending time typing on cramped keyboards. HP may have arrived late to the consumer Netbook game, but by lifting the generous keyboard from last year’s business-oriented model, the Mini 1000 easily joins the category’s top tier.
The CNET Reviews discusses the pros and the cons of the 6-pound, general-purpose Dell Latitude D531 notebook. It says that as compared to other general-purpose notebooks on the market, this 15.4-screen sized laptop is very inexpensive at around $500 and has a built-in Wi-Fi (wireless connectivity). The Dell Latitude D531 comes with simple word processing software. So, if your work entails creating complex documents, you will likely need to upgrade to a more powerful office suite.