When the most anticipated aspect of a new laptop is what it looks like, it can only be a new laptop from Apple. After all, when did a website last run leaked photos of a new laptop chassis from Dell..?

To be fair, the external design of the new Apple MacBook and MacBook Pro is a little bit special, largely because of the manufacturing process behind it. Both the MacBook and MacBook Pro have cases that are carved from a single block of aluminium and assembled from three (or four, if you count the battery cover) single pieces. We’ll leave aside any potential strength advantages that this new “unibody” design bestows and focus on something much more interesting instead – how it looks.

Most people serious about their gaming choose a desktop PC for its power, value and ease of upgrades. Laptops aren’t well known for their gaming prowess and usually lag behind their PC counterparts where graphics technology is concerned.

It seems that no-one’s told Alienware, though, as the company has a long and fairly successful history of cramming insanely powerful hardware into both laptops and PCs. The company is now owned by Dell and while the Texan PC giant has its own XPS range of gaming laptops, the Area-51 m15x puts them well into the shade.

The Sony VAIO VGN-TZ31MN/N is an important laptop for Sony – it’s been a big player in the ultra-portable market for some time, but a host of competitors have emerged in the last few months that look set to steal some of its market share.

The Eee PC massively undercut most manufacturers on price and offered unprecedented portability for a budget machine; the Lenovo X300 ThinkPad brought features galore in a tiny package, as long as money was no object; and the Apple MacBook Air offers unrivalled style and a razor-thin chassis. So, the new TZ31MN is Sony’s answer to these pretenders to the ultra-portable throne.

If it seems like the HTC Shift has been around forever without actually being available, that’s because it was – HTC first unveiled this foray into the UMPC market last October, but the device has been coming “real soon now” ever since. A mere five months later, however, and the Shift has finally hit the shelves – has it been worth the wait?

Very occasionally, a product comes along that makes you wonder why nothing like it has ever been made before. And that’s precisely the feeling we had holding the Lenovo ThinkPad X300 for the first time. It weighs a feather-light 1.45kg, but includes a full-sized keyboard, a 13-inch widescreen and a built-in optical drive. It all seems so simple.

Once you start analysing though, you realise products like this could only appear in 2008. For the first time, technologies like solid-state-disks, low voltage processors and optical drives have reached a point they can be miniaturised – or, in the case of solid-state disks, mass produced – without making unbearable sacrifices.

Most manufacturers would no doubt describe their laptops as “built to last”, but there aren’t that many who go the extra mile to make their models robust enough to withstand more than just the odd knock they’ll get on the daily commute. Getac is one manufacturer that does, however, and its new P470 rugged laptop is built to shrug off all manner of harsh treatment.

Small, lightweight laptops are nothing new but it took the Asus Eee PC to bring the price down to a point where they were within the reach of most users. The Vye mini-v S37 has almost the same dimensions, but is a much more capable computer – and it runs Windows Vista. The catch is that this isn’t a low-cost laptop to play with in your spare time, but at £650, it’s still far cheaper than most ultra-portables.

The Xtreme 770 was our favourite desktop replacement laptop of 2007 and if you just looking at the pictures, you’d be forgiven for thinking that Rock has made very few changes to its flagship gaming laptop since. Looks can be deceiving though, as under the surface, Rock has been busy updating and upgrading almost all of the Xtreme 770’s components (including a new Penryn Core 2 Duo processor), adding a further £400 to its already considerable price.

Samsung’s Aura range of laptops are a fantastically stylish-looking bunch. Unfortunately, those looks come at a price — even the cheapest model we’ve seen, the Samsung R70, will set you back just over £700. Indeed, if you’ve been looking for a laptop for under £400, then you might have abandoned all hope of finding a good-looking, well-specified portable from any of the big brands. Well, Samsung’s R60 Plus might be just what you are looking for.

If there’s one thing you shouldn’t do with a brand new laptop, it’s take it down to the beach, roll it around in the sand and drop it into a rocky pool. While such a day trip would spell the end for most laptops, some, like the Getac V100 Tablet, are made of sturdier stuff.