HP Pavilion ZT3101UK

Value for money isn't usually a phrase we would associate with an HP notebook computer, but it's easy to do so with the Pavilion ZT3101UK. Costing £999, it's a reasonable price to fork out for a portable PC, especially when you consider this machine's specifications.

It is driven by a 1.4GHz Intel Pentium 4M processor, which may sound a little underpowered when you hear of other processors reaching figures of 3.4GHz, but clever technological tinkering means the Pentium 4M performs very well without eating up too much battery life, which is perfect for notebooks.

It's backed up by 256Mb of memory, which is good enough to run Windows XP and carry out general day-to-day tasks, although we would have preferred 512Mb. Our test results showed that it was a reasonable performer, if perhaps just a little under par.

Complementing the processor and memory is the excellent Radeon 9200 graphics card. It uses its own memory, rather than stealing some of the allotted 256Mb system memory. While it's not the fastest mover on earth, it is leaps and bounds ahead of the competition. In fact, it's good enough for the Pavilion to be capable of use for a decent bout of 3D gaming.

The 40Gb hard disk offers a respectable amount of space for your documents and files and the DVD/CD-RW combination drive at gives a method for archiving data should the hard disk start to overfill.

The Pavilion is likely to appeal to digital camera owners, especially those who use SD memory cards. With a built-in SD slot, it's simple to transfer digital images directly to the notebook for storage and editing on the move. The three hours 22 minutes of battery life certainly helps on this front.

Finally, there are the usual range of ports and connectors that you would expect to find, including Wi-Fi. This makes it easy to connect to hotspots for a wireless internet connection.

Although the 15.4in screen makes it look rather bulky, it's light enough to be carried on the occasional trip. The cinema-like wide screen also makes it perfect for watching DVDs on the go.

The size of the Pavilion also means that the keyboard is a decent size and easy to type on. We ran into no problems and found it a pleasure to work with. A touchpad with scroll buttons sits underneath the keypad and can be turned off when typing long documents. This may seem pointless but is actually very useful as it's all too easy to brush over the touchpad and move the cursor, which can play havoc in an open document. This simple idea stops that from happening.

The only real problem that we have with the Pavilion is its lack of software. HP only comes with Norton AntiVirus and then includes just 60 days of live updates. For this kind of product we would have liked to have seen a copy of Microsoft Works Suite at least.

That said, if you want this as a second PC and already have Microsoft Office (the licence lets you install it on a desktop PC and notebook) then the Pavilion is a good choice. It is well priced and comes with a surprisingly good specification.

Contact: HP 0870 010 4320
www.hp.com