Gateway Solo 1400b LS Pro

WHAT'S HOT: The Solo 1400b LS Pro is unusually light for a notebook with a 15.1-inch screen--only 6.1 pounds (not including the power adapter). An LED on the battery lets you check the charge without turning the notebook on, and four programmable shortcut buttons open applications and Web sites in a jiffy.

WHAT'S NOT: Though it's a full-size laptop, the Solo 1400b LS Pro lacks serial and PS/2 ports, which some users may still need. Its PC WorldBench 4 score of 70 lagged 15 percent behind that of Sony's VAIO PCG FX-390P, the only other 1-GHz/700-MHz Pentium III-based notebook running Windows XP Professional we've tested.

WHAT ELSE: The value-oriented Solo 1400b LS Pro is a black-and-silver laptop with a fixed DVD-ROM drive on the right side of the case and a fixed floppy drive on the left. Gateway splurged a bit on USB ports, providing two, but left off a docking connection. The battery is unnecessarily secured with a screw; there's also a standard sliding release on the bottom. The two small, deeply recessed screws that hold the hard drive in are fairly easy to remove, and we had no problem reaching the memory slots, which are located under a separate panel. The Solo 1400b LS Pro keeps its sound system simple: You get a headphone port, a microphone port, and decently loud stereo speakers. We were happy with the keyboard except for the mouse buttons, which are a bit stiff. The Solo had a battery life of 2 hours, 55 minutes on one charge in our tests; that's about average.