With its internal Net MD drive, which has never before been included in a notebook, the Sony PCG-NV109M has something interesting to offer.

The machine sports an interchangeable (or multipurpose) drive bay, which can accommodate either the Net MiniDisc (MD) drive, a subwoofer, a floppy drive or an optional numeric pad. It is built in below the optical drive, giving the overall design an uncomfortably bulky back end.

From the front, however, the machine appears quite slim - a clever design trick. This notebook will not win any awards for portability though, as it weighs 3.9kg, and its dimensions are increased by the bulky multipurpose bay.

The multipurpose bay is a good idea, as it allows you to use sound facilitites, a keypad, a floppy drive or a MiniDisc drive, as and when you need to.

The compact subwoofer sounds excellent and boosts the overall audio quality. It does not cope with loud volumes very well, but the sound is clear, and there are some optional external Vaio speakers available. The ten-key bay gives you all the extra numerical functionality of a full-sized keyboard, but you need to pay extra for this as it is not included in the package.

Unfortunately, you cannot use the subwoofer and the MD unit simultaneously - which seems rather short-sighted - but MD tracks can be copied across to the hard drive. With 30GB to play with, and a Memory Stick slot available as well, storage is adequately covered.

The machine's most interesting feature is the Net MD drive unit. Sony has incorporated its own MiniDisc media format into a notebook for the first time, and it gives you extra options for recording and playing music.

The drive allows you to record digital music from the internet or a CD.

It stores audio in ATRAC3 format, which is a lot faster than the normal recording speed for a MiniDisc, and it makes more efficient use of the available space. The new MD format allows you to download 320 minutes of audio onto an 80-minute MiniDisc. It is ideal for recording music from download sites.

On the opposite side of the bay are modem, network, FireWire and AV ports. The latter can be used to connect the notebook to a TV. The NV109M also has three USB ports at the back, along with the usual range of legacy ports.

Overall, the specifications and features are good. You get a generous 15in display, which is a large size for a notebook and makes watching films or playing games a pleasure. The NV109M is designed for the user who wants to be multimedia-savvy while on the move. The ATI Mobility graphics hardware is powerful and can handle most tasks.

This is a notebook for the audiovisual enthusiast. It is supplied with a combination CD-RW/DVD-Rom drive as standard, which gives you the option of recording onto CD as well as MD. With lots of software included for recording, editing and compiling image and sound files, this notebook is a multimedia master.

With its 1.6GHz Mobile Pentium 4 processor, the NV109M is no slouch in the performance stakes either. And considering the host of power-sapping features, the battery life, at just under two hours, is acceptable.

This is a good all-rounder that offers good connectivity and power, and a comprehensive range of features. If you want lots of audio- and image-editing options in a portable format, it is a tempting option.

Price: £2,003.38 (inc VAT)