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Buyer's guide to computing

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What up, blood? The R700 notebook is a stoosh new edition to Samsung’s Aura family, we do declare. It boasts a whopping 17 inch widescreen with a glossy super TFT finish, for your film-viewing pleasure, as well as a top-notch graphics card, an HDMI port, digital motion camera and no fewer than four USB ports. Battery life is nearly three hours, and it can take up to 4GB of RAM. Finally, a generous dollop of Vista Premium is spooned on top. Tasty.

  1. Shield your laptop from knocks with a Knomo (www.knomobags.com) executive-style laptop bag. For a more rough and ready look, check out Pakuma’s range of urban laptop bags (www.pakuma.com).
  2. If you’re not sure whether your laptop has Wi-Fi, just look for the Intel Centrino badge – all laptops must have wireless capabilities if they want to sport it.
  3. Make sure your hard drive size reflects what you’ll use your laptop for. 40GB will suffice for word processing and spreadsheet jobs, but if you want a stack of music and movies, then you’ll need at least 100GB.
  4. Western Digital (www.wdmybook.com) make external hard drives up to 1TB in size, so you can back up your data, in case your hard drive crashes.

#1 Gaming laptop

Alienware Area 51 M9750

£2,390

Performance: How does this justify its mammoth price tag? With twin graphics cards that can handle the most graphic-heavy games, a superb 17-inch screen and 500GB storage. That’s how.

Love: Razor-sharp screen. Plenty of storage space.

Hate: The cost is perhaps a tad excessive.

Buy one here

Best of the rest - gaming laptops

Rock xtreme 770-T7800

£1,850

Performance: Combining an Intel Core 2 Duo 2.6GHz T7800 processor with NVIDIA GeForce 8700M GT – trust us, that’s a good thing – Rock has produced a gaming monster.

Love: Super powerful and super fast.

Hate: It’s not the best looking notebook we’ve had in our laps.

Buy one here

Asus G1S

£1,310

Performance: With an altogether more agreeable price, the Asus is a pretty good alternative to its more costly cousins. The sound quality’s not great, but graphics are jaw-droppingly good.

Love: Amazing graphics. Comparatively affordable.

Hate: Sound quality from built-in speaker’s quite poor.

Buy one here

HD laptops

Toshiba Satellite X200-219

£1,400

Performance: A top HD-DV all-rounder.

Love: Impressive screen. Great quality movie playback. Good for games.

Hate: Bulky. Huge power supply.

Buy one here

Rock Xtreme X770-T7700

£1,600

Performance: A top performer, but ugly.

Love: Gorgeous screen. Ferocious performance. Top for gaming.

Hate: Noisy. Rough finish. No HDMI port.

Buy one here

Laptops

Sony Vaio VGN-TX5N

£1,550

Performance: Amazing looks, screen, keyboard and DVD rewriter make this an outstanding laptop.

Love: Excellent battery life. Delightful screen.

Hate: It's pretty expensive. Not dual core.

Buy one here

Asus U6

£1,300

Performance: This laptop has a powerful processor but, more importantly, metal lacquer on the lid and leather palm rests.

Love: Didn’t you hear us? Leather palm rests!

Hate: Can’t compete with higher end laptops.

Buy one here

Apple MacBook

£950

Performance: Superior performance and a stunning design make this highly desirable.

Love: Excellent battery. Compact design.

Hate: Having to pay extra for the black paint.

Buy one here

Media PCs

Sony LA2 E6300

£1,300

Performance: Vista Premium, a 300GB hard drive, and a built-in hybrid TV tuner. We’re there.

Love: TV recording. Lack of cables.

Hate: Clear plexiglass surrounding? Urgh!

Buy one here

HP Pavilion HDX9095EA Dragon

£1,700

Performance: With a 20.1-inch screen this is ideal for recording TV, gaming and watching movies.

Love: Clip-on remote. Touch-sensitive controls.

Hate: Hernia-inducing weight.

Buy one here

Apple iMac

From £800

Performance: Resurrected in glossy aluminium and glass, the swish new Macs come with up to 1TB of storage, a super-skinny keyboard and iLife.

Love: Sexy finish. Great built-in software.

Hate: iMovie's been de-powered for some reason.

Buy one here

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