Evesham Quest Roma T37

If you're buying a notebook for its portability you should consider two main factors: size and battery life. Alternatively, if you're looking for a notebook to replace your desktop computer, performance is the key.

Like the majority of notebook computers, the Evesham Quest Roma T37 tries to strike a balance between the two. At its heart is AMD's MT-37 Turion 64 Mobile processor which, at the time of writing, is the fastest model available.

As we've stated in many other reviews, a 64-bit processor may not be that important at present but, as more hardware and software emerges that take advantage of faster 64-bit processing, it will prove a good piece of future-proofing technology.

There's 512Mb of memory to ensure that software applications tick along nicely and, after putting this notebook through its paces in our lab tests, we found it to perform very well in all tasks, including movie editing and DVD creation.

It also benefits from good 3D gaming thanks to the 128Mb Mobility Radeon X700 graphics, and will play all the latest games at reasonable quality settings. It's nowhere near the league of the gaming-specific Dell Inspiron XPS Generation 2, but it's less than half the price. 

The 80Gb hard disk is expected for a notebook of this size and price and, unless you're going to be ripping homemade DVD movies or dealing with megabyte zapping video files, it will last a good while before you need to free up some space.

When that time comes, you can employ the notebook's Sony DVD writer that can write to 'plus' single and double-layer DVDs but not DVD-Ram or 'minus' format DVDs.

Alternatively, you could use any one of the notebook's four USB2 ports or the FireWire socket to attach an external hard disk, which have fallen tremendously in price. For example, a 250Gb drive can now be bought for around £140.

Another important area with notebook computing is battery life and the Quest Roma T37's score of two hours is about right for its size and power. However, add this to its 2.9kg weight and we think it's more suited to sitting on a desk than roaming around busy city streets.

What is nice, though, is the 15.4in widescreen display which will allow you to watch DVD movies in their original state. It also increases the horizontal viewing capacity of office documents and web pages.

It's also equipped with X-Bright technology, which is Evesham's marketing blurb for the new generation of bright screens found on many recent notebook computers. Regardless of what it's called, it works well and makes everything on screen look crisp.

All the familiar ports and sockets are dotted around the edge of the case and Wi-Fi and Bluetooth are built in.

Bundled software consists of Roxio Easy Media Creator 7, Microsoft Works 8 and an antivirus application. The operating system is Windows XP Home and a one-year return to base warranty is included.

In all, the Evesham Quest Roma T37 is a powerful, well-specified notebook at a very reasonable price. It may not use the coveted Intel processor, but it makes the case stronger for opting for a cheaper AMD processor and getting more bang for your buck.

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