Trying to find a value-for-money notebook these days is not an easy task, not because they’re hard to find, but because the complete opposite is true, you can’t turn around without someone offering even more of a bargain to the one you first thought of.

It’s not only the price making the buying decision difficult, it’s what you get for your money. It’s safe to say that any sub £400 notebook will almost the same specification as a £700+ notebook of nine months ago. To make the decision even harder is what do you want your notebook for, business, home, gaming or as a desktop replacement for a standard space hogging PC.

We picked a small selection of notebooks in various classes that have caught our eye over the past few months that we think that you should add to your list of choices.

THINQ! Best Ultraportable

Acer Aspire Timeline AS1810TZ (413G25N)
Price: £450

There was a time when small ultraportable notebooks were almost inspirational products because of their high price, thankfully this isn’t the case anymore and the popularity of netbooks proves there is a need for small highly portable notebooks.

The problem with netbooks is the performance, what’s needed is something with the size and battery life of a netbook and the performance akin that of a notebook at a sensible price. Ticking all these boxes and more is the Acer Aspire Timeline AS1810TZ, an almost perfect example of an ultraportable weighing in at a mere 1.4kg.

At the AS1810TZ’s heart lies an Intel SU4100 dual core processor backed by Intel’s GS45 Express chipset and 3MB of 667MHz DDR2 memory which is clocked at just 1.3GHz but more importantly in the context of the AS1810TZ it has a TDP (Thermal Design Power) of just 10Watts. On paper it may not sound that much more that a netbook offers, but because of the dual core processer, better chipset architecture it just does the everyday jobs so much better and without the struggles associated with netbook hardware and the installed Windows 7 Home Premium runs quickly and smoothly.

Good Amazing battery life
Bad Screen viewing angles. Lack of Bluetooth.
Overall Excellent blend of portability, battery life, performance and usability, everything you reasonably ask of an ultraportable.

Specifications
Processor: Intel Dual Core SU4100 (1.3GHz, 2MB L2 cache)
Memory: 3GB 667MHz DDR2
Graphics: integrated Intel GMA 4500M (64MB shared system memory)
Hard Drive: 250GB
Optical Drive: None
Screen: 11.6in Acer CineCrystal (1,366 by 768 pixel resolution)
Webcam: Yes
Networking: 10/100/1000 Gigabit Ethernet, 802.11a/b/g/n WiFi
Ports: 3 x USB, 2 x audio, 1 x HDMI, 1x VGA
Card Reader: Y, 5-in-1
Colour Options: Black, Blue, Red
Operating System: Windows 7 Home Premium
Dimensions (HxWxD): 30 x 285 x 207mm
Weight: 1.4kg

For more see following pages..