2. It Has A Subwoofer. 'nuff Said

The size of a desktop replacement "laptop" tends to catch most people off guard when first they come across one. The photos don't quite do these machines justice in terms of the amount of desk space that they take up, and you have to constantly warn people who want to cradle it in their arms that it's pretty hefty to carry around.

For all this girth, however, you get a helluva lot of bang for your buck. Consider that the machine we tested comes with five speakers: two beside the keyboard and two in front, as well as a subwoofer underneath. This audio setup provides sound that puts many of the desktops on offer to shame!

The 3.6 GHz of Pentium 4 power is desktop standard, and the mobile GeForce 6800 still provides a huge amount of wallop despite its smaller size. Add in 100 GB of HDD space - there's even a RAID array! - and more fans than you need to cool an office, and the size is easy to understand.

Still, we must always point out that unlike a desktop, it's highly portable. Compared to a Dell XPS tower I recently had to shift around the office, the "fat laptop" was as nimble as a ballerina. And while my desktop-saddled counterparts found themselves enmeshed in a tangle of wires when they arrived for LANnage, yours truly simply had to plug in a power cord, mouse and headset, and I was ready for action.