Packard Bell Dot S

When we unpacked Packard Bell's Dot S, we were quick to dismiss its stylistic-appeal owing to its dull lavender finish. All the other netbooks feature rich, striking colours that make people stand up and take notice. Studying the machine closer however revealed its star qualities.

Component-wise it features a 1.66GHz Intel Atom N570 CPU, 2GB of DDR2 RAM, Intel's HD Graphics adapter, a 10.1-inch LCD screen and a 500GB hard disk drive. While most of these parts can also be found on the other netbooks, the Packard Bell packs the biggest hard drive by far. Considering the Dot S retails for an end user price of US $326 - the second lowest here - it offers excellent value.

Moving to performance the Dot S performed as expected. It managed competitive numbers across the board while managing the second fastest boot-time. When it came to everyday usability the only complaint we had was with the trackpad's single button; it's a bit too stiff and has a fairly wide central dead space, which made it fiddly to use.

Tipping the scales at 1.148kg the Packard Bell is also the second lightest machine here and while its battery life of four hours and 31 minutes isn't mind blowing, it's far from limiting. The Packard Bell, in fact, outlasted the identically priced Acer netbook and the slightly cheaper Lenovo machine.