Best laptops for £799 or less

It's not difficult to see why laptops have been gradually gaining in popularity. Prices have fallen and modern laptops aren't far off desktop PCs in terms of raw performance.

They're also a much more convenient option, especially if you're tight on space or need a machine that you can easily move from room to room or between your office and home.

Most laptops around the £799 price point will have three to four USB ports, a FireWire socket and good wireless capabilities to cover your Wi-Fi and Bluetooth needs. They also tend to have displays with a glossy coating that really makes colours leap from the screen.

However, you shouldn't really expect amazing 3D gaming performance, although some models do have pretty decent 3D graphics chips. What you can expect, though, is a processor that ticks over at 1.8GHz or faster and a decent amount of RAM.

Most will have at least 1GB of memory but 2GB is fast becoming the standard quota of RAM for machines running Windows Vista. Naturally, as we're storing more and more digital media on our computers, a decent-sized hard drive is important. You should be looking for a machine with a drive that offers 120GB or more of storage space.