Buy Now...

It is 27x23x2cm yes the thickness is only 2cm, the weight is only 1.3kilos and with battery life with a reasonable screen brightness at close to 150 minutes this could well save a very expensive gym membership as current muscles may be enough to carry it around.

A 31cm display is clear and bright, excellent when used with power and useable when on batteries. The 1024x768 display is crisp, you can of course make the display brighter by changing the power saving settings but at a cost of less battery time.

It comes with 512k of Ram (504k useable), the processor is a 1.3GHz Intel Centrino Mobile chip and this performed well with everything I threw at it.

See also: Laptops

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The 22cm depth of the working area has a 9cm space for wrists with a quite useable trackpad slightly left of centre. Twin speakers are in front of that and for their minute size they give a clear sound and plenty of it. The next 10cm is taken by the 84 key keyboard, all the alpha and numeric keys are full size. The last 4cm has only the small on/off button top left and an Internet connection button top right.

In this format the left and right sides of the notebook have the external connectors. Right side infra red, one USB2 port and external monitor connector. The left side has SD card and PCMCIA slots, also, headphones, microphone, one USB2, one FireWire (6 pin), AC socket, 10/100 Lan and modem port.

So you may think there are things missing, yes and no. The Q25 comes with an excellent docking station as standard this adds a further 2cm to the thickness. When in place the external monitor connection on the Q25 is cut off as is the 10/100 Lan connection, these are both now transferred to the docking station along with,deep breath. On the front floppy disc and DVD Rom and CD-RW combo drive. The left has line out socket, the right remains mercifully clear while the rear has a PS/2 port for external mouse, two USB2 ports, a FireWire (4 pin port), serial, parallel and external monitor ports, the 10/100 Lan port and AC socket.

As far as software you get Windows XP Professional, Cyber Link Power DVD, 90 day Norton Anti Virus, Nero 5.5 CD Burning Software, Ulead Photo Explorer 7 and some Samsung utilities.

I have used this notebook extensively on batteries and mains for the last couple of weeks and it has done everything I expected without and problem. A 1.3GHz processor may seem slow in comparison to 3GHz desktop offerings but you do not really notice a great difference.

You can undock while the system is live, there is a button between the floppy and DVD/CD-RW combo drive, press it and a few seconds later on screen you are told it is safe to undock, no work is lost and this time is used to make sure you are not accessing the floppy or CD drives.

The Samsung Q25 is £1565 from www.dabs.com with a buy now pay October 2005 offer.

Link : http://www.samsung.co.uk/cgi-bin/ecuk/product/product_detail.jsp?prodID=NQ25RPO37M%2fSUK