Folks in the market for a desktop replacement laptop could do a lot worse than check out the Aspire 9500 from Acer. Boasting huge 17-inch wide-screen display, multimedia controls, an integrated TV tuner and 2GHz Pentium M processor, the 9500 is ready to replace that aging desktop. Storage is catered for with a massive 120GB hard drive spinning at an average 5,400rpm, and game players will be pleased to hear about the inclusion of the ATI Mobility X700 with 256MB of VRAM.

In CNET Labs' benchmarks, the Aspire 9500 proved a very respectable performer. It completed our suite of office-productivity and Internet-content-creation tasks 10 percent faster than the LifeBook N6210 and ran dead even with the Qosmio G25, though it fell behind the new breed of laptops equipped with Intel's Core Duo processor, such as the Qosmio G35-AV600.