The past few months have seen a massive rise in the sale of Mini Laptops, Notebooks or as they are becoming better known Net books.

These miniturised computers, are designed to revolutionise the use of computers when we are on the move. but do these computers offer a real alternative to larger more expensive Notebooks?

What exactly is a Mini Notebook, Ultra portable laptops have been around for a long time but they were very expensive because of the cost of producing the technology to run them, there are still many of them on the market but they are best suited to business users who have money to burn.

Mini Notebooks on the other hand have been developed using low-power processors which are much cheaper than in the past, they are very small in size the screens measuring between 7-10 inches diagonally, the smaller screens have a lower resolution than that of most notebooks but the mini's with 9 or 10 inch screens have displays with a higher resolution.

With so many Mini notebooks on the market finding the best one to suit your needs can be a difficult task.

Below you will find three of the best Mini Notebooks available my views on each of them.

MSI WIND.

ASUS Eee PC100.

Acer Aspire One.

For their small size each of these mini's really pack a punch.

The MS1 Wind's chassis, unlike many other mini notebooks, is large enough to accomodate a larger Keyboard, it has a 10 inch Matte display consisting of 1,024 x 600 pixels the display is clear and bright and suffers from very little glare or reflections. it uses a 1.6GHz Atom Processor and 1GB of main memory, which makes this a speed machine, they come supplied with an 80GB hard disk but you can have a larger hard disk for a little more money, and it comes supplied with Windows XP but they are also are available Linux versions.

For a mini PC, The MSI Wind can stand toe to toe against even the bigger Notebooks on the Market.

For a more detailed review of the MSI Wind click here

The latest Eee PC has a 10 inch screen, which gives it alot more room for the new larger keyboard, it comes with a 6 cell battery which makes it great for a few hours working, even when connected to a wireless network, powered by the 1.6GHz Atom processor it has 1GB of main memory and they come with a 40 GB hard drive which can be upgraded to 160GB, Windows Xp is included in the package.

This is a great little pc if you are on the move with work or even for pleasure.

More detailed review of the Asus Eee here

The Acer is the smartest looking of the bunch, with a white case and a shiny black bezel around the 9 inch screen, instead of a hard disk though it uses an 8GB memory chip, which can be easily extended using one of the 2 memory card readers, it is available in Windows XP but it also comes with a Linux version and it comes fitted with 512 MB of memory.

This mini is Ideal for your travels and is a cheap alternative but without skimping on power quality or looks.

Click here for a more detailed review