Asus M6700NE

The influx of Dothan-equipped notebooks continues in earnest this month, with the Asus M6700NE. It is a stylish offering that marks Asus' long-awaited return to the portable market. As its 3kg frame suggests, this notebook can be carried around, although not necessarily for long periods.

It has a 15.4in TFT screen, a four-speed dual-format DVD writer and an 80GB hard disk. To the rear, you'll find four USB and a single Firewire port, plus a more traditional PC Card connector to the left-hand side of the keyboard.

Shortcut buttons for multimedia operations are accompanied by buttons above the keyboard that provide one-touch access to your email client and Internet browser. There is also a dedicated button to cycle between different screen-brightness profiles, including a low-intensity mode that extends battery life.

In terms of performance, the M6700NE has 1GB of memory paired with a 2GHz Intel Dothan processor. This helped it rack up 167 in Sysmark 2004 - the highest benchmark score we've seen in a notebook.

Asus hasn't cut corners with the graphics performance. The M6700NE uses an ATI Mobility Radeon 9700 with 64MB of dedicatd memory, which helped it score 2,693 in 3Dmark03. Again, this is the highest notebook score we've seen.

The M6700NE's two hours and 43 minutes of battery life isn't great, but if you look past this it is a very desirable piece of kit.

Contact: Asus
www.asus.com.tw

Specifications:

• Windows XP Professional
• Intel Pentium M 2GHz
• 15.4in TFT display (1080 x 1050 native resolution)
• 1GB of DDR Ram
• 80GB hard disk
• Dual-format 4x DVD rewriter
• 64MB ATI Radeon 9700 graphics card
• 3kg
• 4 USB2 ports
• Firewire
• PC Card slot