Despite being relatively inexpensive, the ACi Perfecta is a nicely made machine. The major mouldings are decently thick and the body of the notebook has the dense, solid feel of quality. At 43mm, lid closed, it's also thinner than several of the others here and that helps it along aesthetically. It still has a plastic lid, but for £999 you can't have everything.

The core specification is fairly predictable; 1GHz Flip Chip Pentium III, 192MB of SDRAM and a 20GB hard disk, while the graphics memory is sequestered from the main system. The actual graphics chip is S3's Twister.

Both the 14.1-inch XGA TFT screen and the keyboard are of a good standard, the former pleasingly bright and the latter roomy and easy to get used to thanks to large keys and a fairly logical layout.

Probably on the basis of price, this model is equipped with a straight 8-speed DVD-ROM rather than a combo drive, and like the floppy drive it is fixed, not modular.

As with the Rock Sigma, also reviewed here, there's no serial port on this machine, although it does have a conventional parallel port as well as two USB ports. It also sports a FireWire interface and the obligatory modem, plus an integrated 10/100BaseTX LAN adapter.

Battery life was fairly good at about 2 hours 20 minutes under continuous use, which should mean that you can get a meaningful amount of work done before the shutters come down.

A one year collect and return warranty rounds the Perfecta off nicely, and left us with the feeling that it represented better than average value for money.

ACi - Perfecta price

£999.00 + VAT

ACi: 020 8830 1958