Thanks to their portability and all-in-one design, most of us are now happy to replace our ageing desktop computers with shiny new notebook PCs.

Specifications have dramatically improved over the past few years, and, best of all, good computers are much more affordable.

Available exclusively at Tesco, Gateway's MX8716b is a good example of the modern notebook-as-desktop-replacement. At 3.1Kg you definitely wouldn’t want to carry it around all day, but it’s fine for moving from, say, a bedroom to the lounge, or even into the garden.

Some of the weight comes from its impressive 17in widescreen display. The screen boasts a resolution of 1440x900 pixels and gives a bright, pin-sharp image that’s easy to work with. It’s also particularly well-suited to watching movies using the notebook's in-built 8x DVD rewriter. That said, thanks to an anti-glare coating, the screen is rather reflective for an LCD monitor – turned off, it is almost as reflective as a mirror.

The size of the case allows for a full-size keyboard, complete with a numeric keypad. When we started using it, however, our review model suffered from a bizarre wobbling across the keys – the whole keyboard section felt a bit unstable. You can get used to it but it’s certainly not the best notebook keyboard we’ve seen. We also found the trackpad buttons uncomfortable.

More encouraging are the four USB ports (although, annoyingly, these are stacked in pairs, so using a USB key in one can block the other), a mini Firewire port and a front-mounted memory card reader (for SD and Memorystick cards). There’s also an network socket, a modem and wireless networking support (for 802.11a, b and g networks).

Inside the MX8716b sports a 1.73GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor. While this isn’t the fastest version of the chip available, it’s backed here by a whopping 2GB of memory and together they put in a good performance in our labs testing. Microsoft’s own Vista suitability test also painted the system as being ideal for day-to-day office applications, a spot of photo-editing or playing with video, and the 120GB hard drive offers plenty of storage for documents, images, music and other data files.

An integrated Intel 950 graphics chip, rather than a separate graphics card, means the system isn’t well-suited to the latest 3D games, but it should cope well with slightly older titles, and it is capable of making the most of Vista’s Aero interface.

Given the size of the beast and the power on offer, battery life was predictably short at around 90 minutes. Realistically, however, most users are likely to use this computer plugged in, and so this isn’t a huge issue.

No computer is complete without software, and along with the Home Premium version of Windows Vista, Gateway provides a full suite of applications to get the new user going.

Highlights include Microsoft Works 8.5 for word processing, spreadsheets and other general home and office tasks, plus Microsoft’s Digital Image Starter Edition and Cyberlink’s Power2Go for polishing digital photos and burning CDs and DVDs respectively. Sensibly, there’s also McAfee Internet Security Suite – although this only comes with a three month subscription – and software called BigFix to help things go smoother in the event of technical support issues.

At £549 from Tesco, both online and from larger stores, the Gateway MX8716b is a reasonable replacement for an ageing home desktop PC. However, those after a more portable option or a gaming computer should look elsewhere. And we’re still not happy with the keyboard.

Vista compatible: Yes