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Measuring 36.4 x 26.4 x 3.2cm (W x D x H) and weighing a fairly substantial 3.2Kg, the W1000 notebook, from Asus, certainly has its fair share of eye-appeal. Once you cast your eye upon this piece of kit, your fingers being to itch in anticipation as to what this notebook’s capabilities might be. Lifting the brushed silver aluminium top, with embossed Asus logo, gives a clue to the sturdy built of the unit. The top is heavy but has a smooth action which does help.

Surrounding the keyboard layout is an area of more brushed silver aluminium. This provides ample space for resting the palm or wrist plus a touchpad with left/right mouse key buttons. Along the right edge of the surround are a series of controls, described as semi-invisible fast keys, giving direct access to pre-defined features. You can quickly call up Internet Explorer and your email client plus cycle through different settings for performance, audio and touchpad by pressing the appropriate key.

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The display screen is equally impressive. Although described as just 15.4-inch, the screen area is the equivalent of a 17-inch CRT monitor. The W1000 display is a WXGA/WSVGA + active matrix colour TFT screen that produces great results using a resolution of 1024 x 768 with as many as 16.7 million colours. Powering the display is an ATI Mobility Radeon 9600 chip with 64MB of VRAM. Screen visibility produces excellent results in different lighting conditions and from various angles.

The W1000 is based on an Intel Centrino 1.7 processor drawing on a reasonable 1GB of DDR333 memory. The Centrino processor brings with it increased battery performance and wireless connectivity with 802.11g support. As well as wireless, the W1000 has a network adaptor and software modem.

Supplied as standard with an 80GB hard drive, this notebook has a side-mounted multi-combo drive that provides CD and DVD burning capabilities plus a TV tuner card. The combo drive is handicapped slightly by the eject button. This lies almost flush to the actual drive and is difficult to locate by touch alone. Memory cards have not been forgotten. There is a built-in reader that can handle SD, MMC and MS media. Also included is a slot for Type II PCMCIA cards. A full complement of connection ports are provided including USB 2.0, audio, external monitor and modem. Many of these ports are concealed behind a drop-down flap on the left side of the unit.

The W1000 comes with Windows XP Professional software pre-installed. Asus has also bundled its own Mobile Theatre software which provides a range of multimedia features. This software utility can be used to play DVD/VCD disks, video clips and music tracks plus view and print images. The Mobile Theatre, working in conjunction with the notebook’s built-in TV tuner capability, allows the user to watch and record content from analogue television channels. Even using a basic indoor aerial, the quality of reception is good enough for most purposes.

The software supports channel surfing, tele-text, scheduling and an Internet-based EPG (Electronic Programming Guide) service. When appropriate an indicator on the front of the notebook will display information regarding the track number or channel of whatever media is currently in use. A handy remote control is supplied and this can be housed in the PCMCIA slot when not in use.

As you might expect from the product’s feature list and build quality, the W1000 is not a budget offering. With a two year warranty, the W1000 will cost in the region of £2,115. I was certainly impressed with the performance of this notebook. Unfortunately I am unable to comment on printed documentation as I was limited to a CD-based PDF version. Apart from the notebook and power lead, Asus has included a couple of aerial adaptors plus copies of Nero 5 Express, Medi@Show SE2.0, PowerDirector 2.5ME and AsusDVD.

http://uk.asus.com/products/notebook/w1series/w1_index.htm