It seems like every manufacturer and their night-watchman's dog is producing the latest 'want' gadget. In the early days, the decision was almost as simple as 'shall I get the Eee PC in black, or in white'?

Now there are so many variables in dozens of permutations and from every Big Corp. electronics firm you can think of that some guidance may be required before putting your money down.

Here we take a look at 5 of the newer models on the market.

HP Mini 1000 £400

HP's first foray into the market wasn't that great. The 2133 Mini-Note was appalingly slow and it's screen was far to shiny to be used outdoors. Expectations were low with their latest baby.

Thankfully, HP has learned that they need to produce something special to get a share of this competitive market.

Looks and Usability
It's a big ol' footprint, but that means the keyboard is a good size and comfortable to use. It does have a mouse trackpad is a bit tricky to use as the buttons are weirdly positioned to either side of it, but you get used to it. May be best to have a trial run at your local Dixons.

Unfortunately, HP have cut a corner on the screen, and it suffers from the same glare that defeated the 2133 Mini-Note.

Battery Life and Power
The majority of the netbooks on this list are powered by Intel's Atom N270 CPU so they are much of a muchness. You'll get around 3 hours of video play off a fully charged battery. Again, that's average.

Put your money down?
It's ok and comfy to use, but the glossy screen, and not enough USB ports make it a 'um, sorta'.

Eee PC 901 £299

The 900 model gave a kick up the ass to the mid-size netbook market, and maybe underlined that the 7-incher was just 'too wee'.

Looks and Usability
This has brawn over beauty. It looks clunky, but it's solid. Good if you're lugging it around in your school bag. The keyboard is slightly dinky, so it started to hurt our hands after about 30 minutes of touch typing. We are getting old though.

The winning feature is the gesture mouse pad, allowing you to pinch and stretch and scroll and zoom with ease. Web surfing is a lovely experience.

Battery Life and Power
Again, using the Atom N2370, it's got the same horse-power as most netbooks on the market. 4 and a half hours of lovely video playback is not to be sniffed at off one fully charged battery.

Put your money down?
If word processing your latest novel is not your priority, the 901 covers most bases. Enough USB ports and a nice wifi and Bluetooth availabilty makes this good for file transfers too.

Acer Aspire One £209

Oooh, it looks nice and colourful.

Looks and Usability
The keyboard hits the spot. Easy to type on and good clicky feedback. Bah! But the mouse has all gone wrong. Why put the selector buttons on the left and right? We don't have little extra stumpy bits on the heel of our hands, and are forced to move our entire hand to click.

Battery Life and Power
You can get this with XP, or a custom port of Linux Linpus - and if you go for the latter you will be very pleased indeed. Booting in less than 20 seconds, and easy to use for the novice. Standard performance from the processor (Atom N270 again), but the battery power is a disappointing 2 hours.

Put your money down?
It's got a built in 3G modem which is a really nice feature, if you've got a 3G sim. Wifi and Bluetooth and USB etc as normal. It's cheap, but your batter suffers. You pays your money...

Samsung NC10 £320

Samsung have bitten the bullet, did the math and realised there's good market share to be taken with the NC10.

Looks and Usability
Silver-impregnated keys make for an apparently anti-bacterial keyboard. The display is non-glossy, so makes it more usable outdoors than some of the competitors, which gets it some points. It falls down on the mousepad though, it's a bit weedy.

Battery Life and Power
Again, performance the same as the rivals. However, the battery life in our video test is a staggering 5 and a half hours. We're told it'll survive up to 7 hours with more prudent use.

Put your money down?
It's a funny one. It doesn't have any super-duper standout features, but it covers every base well and is a good contenter for our top pic. The lack of a digital video out is a mere blip.

Eee PC 1000HE £330

They've had a couple of attempts to get the 1000 series right, and Asus have pretty much nailed it on this one.

Looks and Usability
It's big and it's heavy. It's almost not a netbook, but it is. The beautiful 10-inch display lets you see most of the web pages we use every day without having to pan and scan. It's got a keyboard that's about 90% of a standard laptop keyboard so it's pleasurable to type on, even if you're writting your magnum opus.

Battery Life and Performance
Asus claim a 9 hour batter life. We don't even get that out of our good quality office laptops. Some tests have got over 10(!) hours, though that was running some piddling light weight applications. Still, that is impressive. Average though, is 5 and a half hours. Astonishing.

Put your money down?
It's not attractive, and it's a bit heavy, but it is our pick. The keyboard is great, the mouse is good enough, it's got 802.11n highspeed wifi. It's very competitively priced and the battery knocks everyone else into a cocked hat for the best part of the working day. A thousand times, yes!