Sometimes (in laptops designed just for business use) you won’t get a very good sound system or graphics card, and that’s a good thing; they not cheap and if you aren’t a big gamer or music fan you won’t need them.

The Toshiba Portege R400 is one of the first tablet PCs built especially for Windows Vista, and one that makes good use of Vista features including the new Journal software that recognises handwriting when the device is in tablet mode.

Clock speeds that go through the roof only mean you’ll get shorter times out of your battery, and your machine will be hot enough to fry an egg on. The mother lode of mobile chip technology is a long battery life.