What is it with Toshiba’s designers? Their first netbook, the NB100, was a boxy, angular affair that looked like it had appeared out of a rip in time from 1995. Undoubtedly stung by such criticism, Toshiba(Toshiba PA3399U-1BRS battery)’s design team have gifted the company’s follow up, the NB200, with a much sexier design… only to go and spoil it with a naff colour scheme.

Energy Star, a joint program of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Department of Energy, provides a system to rate the energy efficiency of various products. Lenovo(ThinkPad X61 Series battery)’s fleet of Energy Star 5.0 certified PCs adhere to various standards including power management and on-mode power consumption requirements. For example, a ThinkCentre M58 small form factor desktop and a ThinkVision L1940p Wide monitor together provide an extraordinarily energy efficient combination for use in large organizations or in a home-based business, using only 377 kilowatts per year, compared to a baseline PC and CRT monitor at 635 KWH. By comparison, a refrigerator consumes an estimated 529 KWH.

Good as they might be for their intended purpose, Intel and AMD are now pushing notebook platforms that offer more power and better Acer Aspire 1640 battery life - usually in slightly larger chassis that ship with 12-14in screens.

But the word on the street is that the ASUS brand has produced an ideal compromise with the ultra-light “Netbook” EeePC range.

So, when ASUS asked me to test-out their “EeePC 1000 HE” I decided to give it a go.

Asus Eee PC 901 comes with an array of features. It features 3.75G connectivity, 1.3 megapixel camera, 802.11b/g/n wireless, Bluetooth, 1 GB DDR2 memory, 16 GB Solid State Drive, High-Speed Uplink Packet Access (HSUPA) compatibility, 7.5-hour battery life, Intel Atom CPU, 8.9-inch screen and support for MMC/SD memory card reader.

The chassis is built from hard glossy plastics and proved to be surprisingly durable. The HP(HP Pavilion dv8000 battery) Imprint-patterned design scheme has been used and will repel and attract people in equal measure. The smart metallic trim looks great, however.

Consumers can get the Samsung NC10, ordinarily priced at over £400, when they sign up for 18 months at £30 per month. The package also includes a 3 mobile broadband dongle as well as 5GB of usage per month.

Intel CULV platform takes in low-power derivatives from the mobile Core 2 and, in the basic form, couples them up with the company’s own chipset and graphics. We saw such an example from Acer’s Timeline laptop.

ASUS(Asus AL23-901 battery) trumpets the arrival of CULV in considerable style, releasing the U-series laptops. We take a look at the U20A, to see if the Taiwanese giant has it right.