Time Traveller P4-2400+VQ Professional

The Time Traveller p4-2400+VQ Professional has a 2.4GHz processor and 512MB of DDR system memory, and is a flyer.

On the downside, the underside of the chassis and the external power supply get very warm to the touch, and the exhaust from the heatsink is warm too. The cooling fan is quite noisy, and the battery life is incredibly poor at one hour, four minutes.

On the plus side, this notebook is very cheap, at £1,286 inc VAT. You get quite a lot for your cash besides the raw performance - that's mainly down to the SIS 650 chipset, which has loads of integrated features.

This is a professional model notebook, despite running Windows XP Home, and so has plenty of ports. It has a modem, 10/100 Lan and infrared, as well as Firewire and four USB ports. There are also TV-out, VGA and printer ports as well as a single PC Card slot.

The ports are arranged a little haphazardly, but they're all present and correct which is frankly more important.

There is no floppy drive, which is a minor inconvenience, and Time has not supplied an external USB drive. The combo drive is slot-loading, which is unusual.

The 14in screen is quite bright and looks good but has a narrow viewing angle. The keyboard is also good, but nothing special. We were, however, quite happy with the touchpad and thought the mouse and scroll buttons were decent too.

SPECS

• P4 2.4GHz processor
• 512MB of memory (32MB for graphics)
• SIS 650 graphics
• 60GB hard drive
• Matshita CD-RWDVD-8121 combo drive 8x 8x 24x 8x
• 14in screen
• Firewire, infra-red, 10/100 Lan, modem
• Windows XP Home
• 3yr RTB warranty

DETAILS
Price: £1,286.63 (£1,095 ex VAT)

Contact: Time 01282 777 555
www.timecomputers.com