WHAT'S HOT: The WinBook N4 offers solid basic features for the traditional corporate set, topped by dark good looks. The all-in-one design features a fixed DVD-ROM/CD-RW combination drive on the right and a fixed floppy drive on the left. The N4's 15-inch screen has a native resolution of 1400 by 1050, which is suitable for watching DVD movies or doing detail work in big spreadsheets and graphics files--if you have exceptionally good eyesight.

WHAT'S NOT: With a tested battery life of 2 hours, 19 minutes, the N4 ran about 10 minutes short of our average Pentium 4 notebook time of 2 hours, 30 minutes. WinBook offers 13 hours of technical support on weekdays and 7 hours on Saturdays, which lags behind industry standards.

The N4 is on the heavy side: It weighs almost 8 pounds without peripherals and almost 9 pounds with its AC adapter and phone cord. There's no switch or button on the case to toggle the shortcut buttons between their Launch and Music Control modes--you have to use an included utility.

WHAT ELSE: Equipped with Intel's 2-GHz/1.2-GHz Pentium 4-M, our test machine turned in a PC WorldBench 4 score of 98--respectable for a P4 notebook. The average 1.8-GHz Pentium 4 notebook we've tested has earned a score of 95. WinBook said that this model now ships with 32MB of video RAM, twice as much as our test unit's 16MB.

Aside from its large screen, the N4's attractive points include its DVD-ROM/CD-RW combination drive and its fetching dark case with metallic accents. The combo drive has a framed eject button, which makes it easier to find with your fingers. Another nice touch is the unit's all-too-rare battery gauge on the large, square power pack. You get most of the standard notebook ports--the little-used serial port is missing--but don't look for newer items such as wireless networking hardware, a FireWire port, or even a garden-variety TV-out port. There's a single PC Card slot on the left; unlike the buttons found on many notebooks, the push release is rounded for comfort. Though it has buttons capable of starting, stopping, and ejecting music CDs, the N4 doesn't have what it takes to replace your CD player. The speakers' location on the front of the unit allows for fairly good projection, but they sound a little flat and artificial. Furthermore, volume control is relegated to an inconvenient Function-key combination, and the headphone jack is placed far back on the left side.

The N4's spacious keyboard feels fine, and the giant, squared-off mouse buttons are difficult to miss. When the N4 is configured with 256MB of RAM, an open memory socket remains for upgrading. To pull the hard drive out of the front of the case you need to remove only a single small screw on the bottom of the notebook. The user manual is exhaustive, but the electronic documentation--which describes the notebook's parts but doesn't include pictures--is less useful.

UPSHOT: Though it is a solid machine overall, the $2794 WinBook N4 is expensive for what it offers. For this much money we expect built-in wireless hardware, better sound, and more multimedia connections.

SUMMARY

WinBook N4 PC WorldBench 4 score of 98, 2-GHz/1.2-GHz Pentium 4-M, 256MB of DDR266 SDRAM, 512KB of L2 cache, Windows XP Professional, 15-inch active matrix screen, NVidia GeForce2 Go graphics with 16MB of DDR SDRAM, 40GB hard drive, 8X DVD-ROM and 8X/8X/24X CD-RW combination drive, built-in V.92 modem and network interface, touchpad pointing device, 8.9-pound weight (including AC adapter and phone cord). One-year parts and labor warranty; free, unlimited toll-free technical support for 13 hours on weekdays, 7 hours on Saturdays. $2794 800/965-9349 www.winbook.com