Measuring over nineteen inches from corner to corner and weighing in at almost five kilograms, the Aspire certainly hasn’t been designed for optimum portability. Carrying the laptop for more than ten minutes is a painful exercise, while fitting it inside a backpack is an impossibility. Acer have further cemented the Aspire’s anti-travel reputation by fitting a battery which is unlikely to last through a television show, let alone a feature film.

But despite its limited portability and weak battery, the Aspire is quite a worthwhile laptop. Its case is reasonably rugged and business-friendly, while its large keyboard makes inputting data simple. A business machine at its heart, the Aspire seems as if it could replace entire desktop workstations; it certainly has enough features and screen real estate for the job.

An Intel Core 2 Quad processor provides adequate power, although it’s significantly slower than the most recent releases from Intel. Managing multiple applications is simple and results in almost no slowdown, though there is some noticeable system lag when switching from one resource-heavy program to another.

Despite its gamer-friendly screen and large keyboard, the Aspire isn’t a brilliant gaming notebook. A dedicated GPU is included as standard, although like the processor it fails to provide ultra-modern performance. The large screen is certainly a bonus for light gamers, and most titles encounter little slowdown when geared to medium-level graphics settings.

A 1TB hard drive is included, along with an integrated TV tuner and extendable aerial. The Aspire could be the ultimate inexpensive media centre, as a built-in Blu-ray drive complements its massive storage capacity and potential for directly recording television footage. The Acer’s large screen is capable of full 1080p high-definition playback, and is ideal for watching movies or online video.

While we’re appreciative of the Aspire’s multimedia chops, we’re baffled by Acer’s decision to pair the laptop with Windows Vista. Microsoft’s not-so-recent operating system was subject to plenty of criticism upon release, and although slightly more optimized and user-friendly today, we’re clueless as to why it’s been included when a more modern version of Windows is available.

Priced at just £799 and boasting a series of features otherwise unseen on laptops at its price, we’re certain that the Aspire 8935G-904G1TBwn is one of this year’s bargain releases. A Blu-ray drive and truly giant display round out its otherwise lacklustre feature set, giving non-gamers a fantastic home multimedia rig.

Despite its highly limited portability and outdated processor, we’re big fans of the Aspire 8935G-904G1TBwn. With desktop PCs slowly declining in popularity and netbooks offering portability without the need for a laptop, the Aspire 8935G-904G1TBwn could soon become the ideal home computer.

Despite housing a fourteen-inch display and a full-size laptop keyboard, the X400-225UK weighs in at just 1.7 kilograms. MSI have used a thick plastic material for the X400′s enclosure, deciding to forego the metal enclosures used by rival manufacturers Dell and Apple Inc. in order to save weight and increase portability.

The focus on portability is instantly apparent. While the MSI X400-225UK features a larger display and wider keyboard than other ultra-portable notebooks, its slim design and relative durability keep it from falling into the all-design-no-strength category, one that’s annoyingly familiar with portable computers.

Performance is delivered through a special low-voltage Intel Mobile processor, designed to keep the X400-225UK‘s power needs relatively low and its temperature in Arctic levels. While this is great for system stability and power usage, we found the X400-225UK‘s performance to be relatively poor. Most applications ran smoothly, although high-power activities require more processing time than on other mid-range portable notebooks.

Multimedia performance is reasonable, though the X400-225UK has a tendency to fall into frame-by-frame mode while playing HD videos and streaming online multimedia content. The processor limitations aren’t likely to interfere while preparing documents or browsing the internet, though they could have been eliminated quite cheaply through a quicker system processor.

However, the X400-225UK does win one multimedia prize. Its fourteen-inch display is one of the best we’ve found on a laptop designed for portability, giving users access to clear and bright data wherever they may need it. A HDMI port is included, allowing users to connect the X400-225UK with a high-definition television or external monitor.

No optical drive is installed in the X400-225UK, though users can attach a third-part optical drive via USB for remote movie watching. Given that the X400-225UK shares its measurements with Apple’s Macbook Air and Dell’s ultra-portable line, we’re far from surprised that the machine lacks an optical drive as standard.

While light, portable, and quite pretty, the X400-225UK is brought down by one major weakness: its severely limited battery power. When used as a workstation the X400-225UK is unlikely to last for more than three hours on a single charge. Multimedia usage sees the battery’s lifespan drop even further, with tests pinning its power reserves at under 120 minutes.

This limited endurance makes the X400-225UK an unusual notebook. It’s highly portable in design and construction, weighing in at under two kilos and compact enough to fit into a magazine envelope. Yet at the same time it’s utterly worthless for travel computing, barely able to survive the average blockbuster film or remote work session.

Our opinions are mixed. We love the X400-225UK‘s display and adore its design, but we can’t recommend it as a travel laptop or remote workstation. Priced at just £499 it’s a purchase that’s unlikely to cause major financial harm, though we still believe it’s best to look elsewhere.

The SN12-E22B is a low-cost laptop, priced at just £469 and packing an impressive array of features for the price. Highly portable but relatively free of the ‘portability premium’ we’ve seen attached to other laptops, the Hannspree SN12-E22B is one of our favourite low-cost laptops in years.

With a slim case and solid build quality, the Hannspree SN12-E22B is both portable and reasonably strong. We’ve yet to test the case in high-risk situations, nor have we seen it survive under physical stress. However, judging by the system’s design, relatively rigid construction process, and limited number of failure points, this could be a laptop that lasts for several years without fault.

Power is reasonable, albeit slightly limited when compared with high-end laptops. An Intel Core 2 Duo processor provides usable power for programmers and office workers, while 2GB RAM keeps multiple programs easily manageable and slowdown at a minimum. While nothing next to high-end personal computers, the SN12-E22B certainly holds its own for basic computing.

Unfortunately, it’s a lack of graphical processing power that stops the SN12-E22B from becoming this generation’s go-to budget gaming platform. The system relies on an internal graphics card for video and 3D rendering, slowing performance and limiting compatibility with all but the most basic titles. Multimedia use is acceptable, albeit slightly choppy during high definition video.

Alongside the laptop’s impressive build quality is a keyboard that, quite unfortunately, lets this notebook down. Hannspree have eschewed the popular Macbook-style isolated keyboard layout, instead choosing to use a standard keyboard which is fixed in the middle. Key inputs are clumsy and difficult, while the keyboard’s annoying construction style makes entry slightly soft.

It’s much the same on the touchpad front. Hannspree are a fairly new laptop manufacturer, and in many ways it shows. Control is slightly finicky and precision is limited, with the touchpad proving difficult to use for gamers and power users. The mouse buttons are acceptable, although we’ve certainly grown more comfortable with the ‘invisible button’ style used by HP and Apple.

Application fans are in for a mixed bag. Hannspree have decided not to include an optical drive in the SN12-E22B, aiming to save space and maximize battery life in the process. It’s a non issue for power users and techies, although we can’t help but feel it will be missed; due to its low price, the SN12-E22B seems more likely to attract an audience with little use for online installers.

All in all, the SN12-E22B is certainly a worthwhile purchase. If you can live without an optical drive, work on a slightly uncomfortable keyboard, and get by without playing games, it could even be a great choice. For students, digital workers, and technology enthusiasts with a limited budget, this is the compact notebook to choose.

The ThinkPad X100e continues this tradition in inexpensive, compact, and remarkably portable style. One of the smallest full-function laptops we’ve seen and a major proponent of functional design, the X100e is a portable, durable, and highly cost-effective piece of machinery.

Unlike other ThinkPads, the X100e is available from as little as £390. The entry-level laptop boasts the same features that have made the ThinkPad series famous, including a pointing control stick, liquid resistant keyboard, and dual-option mouse buttons and scroll controls.

What separates it from the remainder of the ThinkPad lineup is its performance. Lenovo’s high-end ThinkPad notebooks typically cost upwards of £1000 and feature modern components. The X100e offers the same prized design features and robust construction, though without the performance many mobile professionals have grown to expect from a ThinkPad.

The X100e‘s processor is quite basic – an inexpensive and simple AMD single-core unit which offers limited performance. All office applications are responsive and fast, as is internet browsing and basic photo editing. The X100e is ideal for mobile office use, though its limited power and tiny display can make multimedia tasks a nightmare.

But despite its compact screen – the ThinkPad’s display measures just eleven inches – the X100e is a decent mobile movie station. Graphics performance is adequate, allowing users to play dated PC games, while a 250GB hard drive allows for a sizeable compressed movie and music collection.

Of course, the vast majority of buyers aren’t looking at the X100e as a multimedia station, but as a business machine. The X100e features the same keyboard as other ThinkPad models, though it uses an isolated-key layout instead of the standard one-piece design. Water resistant and highly durable, the X100e‘s keyboard is one of the best on any consumer laptop.

Most business tasks are performed efficiently on the X100e, although the small display can make managing multiple windows quite difficult. The limited screen resolution can distort images and websites – an annoyance common amongst compact laptops and netbooks – and make presentations slightly more difficult to navigate.

The ThinkPad X100e is ultimately a mixed bag. Available at a significantly lower cost than similar models and boasting one of the most trusted designs in computing, it’s a reliable piece of equipment for business users and frequent travellers. The lack of a built-in optical drive reduces its multimedia power, though an integrated media card system allows users to carry out basic photo editing tasks.

For us, it’s a computer that’s equal parts netbook and notebook. Highly portable and surprisingly durable, the ThinkPad X100e beats out its netbook competitors while ultimately failing to deliver corporate-level performance. At £390 it’s a very inexpensive option for remote workers, albeit one that’s only viable for the most basic office tasks.

At first glance, the Lifebook T4410 looks just like any other tablet notebook. Its screen swivels around to become parallel with the notebook body; its enclosure is fabricated from dense plastic and offers simple, albeit slightly uninspired, portability. While the T4410′s keyboard is far from ideal, it’s comfortable enough for creating documents and preparing presentations.

But this tablet laptop is quite different from the others. Rather than installing an inexpensive processor and focusing on usability, Fujitsu have outfitted the Lifebook T4410 with an Intel Core 2 Duo and reasonably powerful integrated graphics processing unit. Most applications are handled with ease, though we can’t recommend the Lifebook T4410 purely for its processing power.

A 160GB hard drive is installed as standard, offering reasonable storage capacity and a decent access speed. The T4410 includes a multi-use memory and storage card slot, allowing users to easily access mobile broadband connections or edit their photos while on the go. An HDMI port is also included, giving the Lifebook T4410 reasonable multimedia capabilities.

Despite its impressive feature list, the Lifebook T4410 remains a tablet at heart. The 180-degree display can be turned parallel and clipped into the laptop’s body, giving users a simple and highly usable graphics tablet. Weighing in at just over two kilograms, the T4410 is light enough to keep steady in one hand, with another making use of the control stylus.

Writing and drawing using the Lifebook T4410‘s stylus is remarkably simple. The display is bright, sensitive, and quite forgiving – a pleasant alternative to the many bulky, user-unfriendly, and rigid tablet displays out there. Stylus movements are followed accurately and monitored quite effectively; we found that the Lifebook T4410 could track movement with the stylus over an inch from its screen.

However, the sensitive screen and decent processor certainly don’t make the Lifebook T4410 a winner. The T4410 ships with few touchscreen applications installed – the Microsoft Touch Pack was all we could find, and it’s included even on standard display laptops. Switching away from the touchscreen gives users a miniscule touchpad, which makes the T4410 a frustrating experience for business users and mobile workers.

Combined with a poor battery lifespan and a rather uninspired enclosure, these missed features make the Lifebook T4410 a difficult purchase to justify. It’s doubtlessly effective for artists and graphics experts in need of a mobile computer, although it’s arguably less user-friendly for mobile work than a USB graphics tablet and standard notebook.

At just over £1,100 the Lifebook T4410 is far from cheap. Graphic design gurus may enjoy the T4410′s crisp display and great drawing sensitivity, though its lack of basic features make it a particularly difficult purchase for non-designers.

The Getac B300 is a unique piece of technology from a company renowned for all things heavy duty. Designed for use in extreme situations, it’s fitted with just about every stealth and safety feature you could imagine. Its keyboard can withstand water, oil, and almost every other liquid nuisance; its keys can be blacked out for use in stealth night-time situations, and its rigid casing allows it to operate equally well in Arctic tundra or Arabian desert.

The B300 is obviously a machine with a specific audience in mind: 007 wannabes. While we can see its value as a piece of military computing equipment or a laptop for remote trekkers, is it really the type of device that deserves a consumer release? Prices begin at £3,900 and increase depending on your requirements, making the B300 a device that only the seriously adventurous – or seriously geeky – can afford.

Getac have made a point of highlighting their laptop’s capabilities, and for good reason. Their tech devices go beyond simple durability and enter a category that’s otherwise unknown to technology fans. The B300 has been designed to withstand repeated exposure to high-pressure water jets, stay operational through a sandstorm, and even survive a trip to the Siberian wilderness.

So it seems, quite fittingly so, a little ridiculous sitting inside your living room. While we certainly recognise the value in such a device for soldiers, adventurers, and international spies, it seems quite unlikely that any of these people would end up shopping for a consumer electronics device. The B300 is an absurd mixture of geeky features and useful protection, although its aimed squarely at an audience that’s unlikely to ever use it.

The laptop itself offers decent performance. The processor and memory are standard issue for a machine of its calibre, while the 3D graphics card is strangely absent. Portability and mobile usage are both surprisingly good, with the system’s battery holding out for almost seven hours in the field.

But as a piece of technology, it’s utterly infuriating to use. The keyboard is housed in a rubber enclosure, rendering all but the hardest presses utterly worthless. The system’s trackpad is equally insensitive, able to detect only the most defined and solid strokes. We can see the reasons for such limited usability, but as a consumer laptop it’s just bizarre that they’re included as such.

The Getac B300 is a very specific piece of equipment with an even more specific audience. It’s big, ugly, and an absolute nightmare to use for all but the most basic tasks, though we can’t help but like it at least a little bit. It is, after all, the Godzilla of portable computing.

The Edge15 Value Plus is their entry-level model, a relatively standard fifteen-inch laptop boasting solid construction and surprisingly able performance. Priced at just £419 and available in a number of configurations, it’s a real surprise pick and one of our favourite entry-level consumer notebooks.

The Edge15 is housed in an unremarkable enclosure, one that looks out of place alongside the shiny aluminium laptop enclosures we’ve grown used to. However, it’s quite strong and reasonably good looking, if slightly utilitarian. The case is similar to that found on the previous generation’s Apple Macbook, though with a larger keyboard and less significantly effective touchpad.

With an isolated-key keyboard and tactile numeric buttons, the Edge15 Value Plus is an impressive workstation and a worthwhile business laptop. The keys are quite springy and responsive, making it easy to type lengthy documents and dictate information. There’s a slight keystroke noise that only becomes apparent after moderate use, although it’s far from a major issue.

With a modest £419 sticker price, the Edge15 Value Plus certainly isn’t a performance machine. An Intel Core 2 Duo processor is included as standard, allowing the Edge15 to carry out basic tasks smoothly and run most applications. 4GB of high-speed RAM is installed by default, giving the Edge15 decent simultaneous application performance and multitasking power.

But despite its limited power, the Edge15 Value Plus feels quite at home running office applications and browsing the internet. It’s certainly no match for this generation’s quad-core multimedia laptops lineup, but it offers sufficient processing power and usability for first-time buyers and workstation users.

Rounding out the laptop is a crisp fifteen-inch screen and the standard array of multimedia input ports. The display itself is vivid and bright, one of the best we’ve seen in such an inexpensive laptop. An HDMI port is not included, although users can attach a second monitor to the Edge15 for home use or as part of a desktop workstation.

Despite offering reasonable performance and impressive multimedia power, the Edge15 is a poor travel laptop. Its unremarkable design and bulky size hamper portability, while its limited battery power make it a poor choice when compared to the many ten-hour battery notebooks out there. We consistently achieved three-to-four hours on the Edge15‘s battery, though we suspect the figure would drop significantly when watching videos or gaming.

The Edge15 Value Plus is an inexpensive, user-friendly, and surprisingly flexible laptop. While we can’t recommend it to professionals or frequent travellers, we’re quite confident you won’t find a better home-based laptop for the price. With a large screen and a fantastic keyboard, the Edge15 Value Plus is one of our favourite entry-level consumer laptops.

But despite the truly huge advances in modern computing that we’ve seen over the last five years, few rival the giant leaps that happened during the 1980s and 1990s. They weren’t particularly sleek or advanced machines, admittedly, but they were the building blocks that lead to our current computing revolution.

These three laptops were revolutionary in their time, not just for the features that they introduced but for the design standards which they ushered into the world. If you’re looking for a piece of tech history, do your best to track one down and add it to your collection. It may not compute as quickly as a new Macbook Pro, but it’ll look every piece as slick and iconic sitting on your work desk.

Apple iBook G3

When Apple unveiled the iBook in 1999, the technology press were torn over whether or not it was a revolutionary piece of kit. Critics claimed that the design was reminiscent of a toilet seat, using the system’s increased weight above the higher-performance Powerbook as a popular talking point.

Others were more responsive, arguing that the iBook’s distinctive design and child-friendly handle would make it the ideal laptop for educational use. Immensely popular in its day and one of Apple’s most instantly recognizable consumer models, the iBook G3 was replaced by the Macbook in 2006 – a machine that shared many of its internal design characteristics.

Asus Eee PC

Asus ushered in the era of ultra-portable computing with the Eee PC. Built around simplicity and portability, the machine proved hugely popular amongst students, travellers, and businesspeople. While its performance was highly limited and its keyboard frustratingly small, the machine became the go-to mobile computer for anyone in need of a constant connection.

The Eee PC line now includes several models, some approaching the size of a standard laptop. Asus have seen their design endlessly imitated and copied, not just by other manufacturers but in other categories of technology; cellphone manufacturers have mimicked the Eee PC’s linux operating system on their own mobile devices.

IBM ThinkPad 700C

Think reliability, professionalism, and comfort and you’ll think ThinkPad. IBM’s critically acclaimed and immensely popular professional laptop selection has remained popular and appreciated over the years, forming the backbone of the 20^th century mobile computing suite.

Now manufactured by Chinese-based Lenovo, the ThinkPad remains as reliable and user-friendly as ever. The distinctive black casing has remained almost completely unchanged over the machine’s fifteen-year lifespan, receiving only incremental updates and minor hardware additions. If you need a reliable, simple, and devastatingly fast Windows-based mobile workstation, the ThinkPad remains the best model out there.

This is in addition to the system’s already impressive design and durability. Built out of aluminium and designed to survive all but a nuclear attack, the new Macbook Pro range has been called the most physically solid laptop lineup of the last decade. It’s a selling point that’s pushing many PC users to consider a simultaneous upgrade and conversion. But is it really worth it?

Apple’s flagship laptop is the Macbook Pro 17 – a seventeen-inch multimedia laptop more at home in a creative suite than a crowded office. It’s hugely powerful, sleek and stylish, and priced closer to a high-end piece of professional technology than a consumer-focused laptop. Apple have chosen to revamp the laptop for 2010, adding a 512MB nVidia graphics card and quad-core processor as standard.

With a price tag of almost £1,700 these features are more of an expectation than a welcome bonus, though the Macbook Pro 17 still offers immense value. Performance is stunning – a combination of the powerful quad-core Intel processor and Apple’s highly optimized OS X Snow Leopard. The 17-inch model ships with 4GB of RAM as standard, a figure which can be extended to 8GB with an inexpensive memory upgrade.

But alongside the Macbook Pro 17′s intimidating processing power and flexible memory, the system displays several short-sighted exclusions and strange choices. Apple’s standard Superdrive is included – a combination DVD and CD rewriter – yet we feel the 17-inch media laptop would be more comfortable sporting a full Blu-ray disc drive.

The nVidia graphics card is also a mixed bag. Despite empowering media users and transforming the Macbook Pro into a more gamer-focused machine, there’s no simple way to disable the graphics card and operate on the motherboard’s built-in graphics unit. The built-in battery is powerful enough to make long haul flights and journeys manageable, though allowing users to switch the display card off could add hours onto the system’s mobile longevity.

We feel that the Macbook Pro 17 has succeeded in all the categories which Apple are renowned for, while at the same time falling guilty to some basic software and control faux pas. A beautiful piece of hardware, the 17-inch Macbook Pro would be significantly improved by a greater degree of user control and software options.

But we also have no qualms in recommending the latest Macbook Pro, especially as an all-in-one multimedia centre. It’s expensive – unreasonably expensive for many users – but it just doesn’t matter to us. While the lack of a Blu-ray drive and a limited selection of user control options make the Macbook Pro 17 a difficult choice for techies, we’re certain that this is the best non-Windows laptop available today.