Please note - this is actually a review of a slightly different laptop from the one specified - I bought the SJ51 not the SW51. Packard Bell no longer sell the SW51. The basic machines are identical, but the SW had AMD Turion, 1GB RAM and 1.6GHz clock speed, and the SJ has the Athlon x 2, 2GB RM and 1.9Ghz, . Everything else is the same; if Ciao ever set up the right category out I'll move this review!

MY PURCHASE

Packard Bell have been making laptops for years - they have been in business since 1991 and are a familiar name, though not one really associated with quality, so I did have some initial concerns when the salesman suggested it.

After considering my options, though this Packard Bell was not the laptop I was intending to buy, once the salesman suggested it, I gradually warmed to the idea. Packard Bell products tend to sit at the customer friendly, affordable and accessible end of the market, and the Easy Note series encompasses a wide range of laptops, ranging from the 7 inch 950g subnotebook range XS, to this one - the 17 inch 3.5kg SJ51. They also are a market leader in MP3 players. Though they used to be "Packaged Hell" and perhaps becuse of that poor reputation, this laptop appeared to offer me a great package for a very low price. Since my budget was a measly £400, I was pleased to find everything I wanted for that!

MY REQUIREMENTS

The other thing I wanted going in was 2GBs or more - I know than 1GB is insufficent to make a decent job of running Windows Vista, and it's not any good in the long run buying XP again as they will stop supporting it in a year or two and then you're looking at having to upgrade.

It also has 512k of cache. This is not massive but again, it's adequate and better than most other computers I own at the moment. Indeed I am one of the poor suckers with a Celeron in my desktop (I hasten to add I was given it) which saved money by having no level 2 cache at all - big mistake; the damn thing does nothing but scroll - so a reasonable size L2 cache was on my list of essentials.

One big plus for me is the built-in VGA webcam - it sits at the top of the screen so is perfect for skypeing, which with two small children, three grown up sons and some of their grandparents living abroad, being able to webcam is really important, but on a budget laptop I could only put it on my list of "would likes" rather than "must haves." Using it is very simple - I just switched on skype which came preloaded, logged on and was away. It's not jerky and is good quality.

It has a perfectly comfortable full qwerty keyboard with a separate number pad over on the right (personally I hate number pads superimposed over qwerty keys to save space as you get your knickers in a twist with the number lock). The tracker pad is a little odd, being a kind of circle with one long button under it, with left and right mouse button functionality at either end. Now I'm used to it, it is just fine. As I use it on the sofa and in bed, I haven't bothered to plug in a wireless mouse separately, and I'm doing fine with it, despite not being a fan of tracker pads.

The first big minus is the battery life - yes I know have a super bright 17inch screen but the damn thing weighs 3.5kgs already, so putting in a battery which lasts two hours surely could have been possible!!! With the screen on ultra bright it lasts maybe an hour, only on low screen lighting battery saving setting can you get maybe, maybe, an hour and a half but really and truly that is poor. Now I use mine round the house and rarely take it out on business, and let's face it, who would buy a 17 inch laptop to work on the train everyday? It would be nice to be able to put it on the kitchen table though, and watch a DVD without having to rescue the lead, but for my purposes it is not a serious drawback. You need to think about your usage needs if you were thinking to buy one, however.