Out of the box it looks much like any generic laptop. At 2.9kg weight. Its not the lightest laptop I've seen, but its certainly one of the lighter ones on the market.

It compares well to more expensive laptops  and I'm delighted to see the Mail and Internet quick access buttons work properly. When pressed, they load your preferred email and web-browsing applications, very helpful if you only don't have access to a mouse.

Ubuntu 6.06 works well on the new Linux laptop, although some of the more advanced features can be a little obscure. There is no wireless switch for example, instead wifi functionality is enabled / disabled using the Fn-F2 key combination on the keyboard.

Specification

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The laptop only has 256MB of ram, which is enough for general usage but is is not a machine that you want to hammer with lots of memory intensive processes.

For heat dispersion the laptop has two risers, that flip out from the underside. It looks as if it could probably work without them being used, but there is a fan intake in the middle of the base of the laptop, so its better to use them rather than strain the fan.

There is no in-built microphone, so if you want to use VOIP, you need to get a external microphone or handset. There are 2 USB slots on the left side, and 2 on the rear.

My only major criticism would be no PCMCIA slot - you can't add a firewire card etc. The sound quality from the in-built speakers is what you'd expect from a laptop - these are no Bose speakers. The volume level is pretty decent, again what you'd expect from a laptop. The fan is on a temperature controller, so when you are hammering the laptop you can hear it power up. Its not so loud to be really annoying, but it might distract you a little bit as it powers up and down when idle.

Generally if you want a machine to quickly connect to your work VPN, or a nice basic laptop, I'd recommend it. If on the other hand you're going to hit it pretty hard with games or multi-media applications, it's definitely worth checking out some of the more powerful laptops in the range ...