Samsung R60

At the time of purchase, the big differentiator for the Samsung R60+ was that it came with a 3 year guarantee. Bitter from the failure of my old Toshiba after 18 months, this was a valuable extra - for "free" versus £100 cost for many other brands.

On the whole the machine has been very pleasing. Enough memory to operate Vista & standard applications, good speed, good wifi, decent strong build. No problems with the keyboard, proper shaped screen (I don't watch movies on my PC often, so want the extra height for web browsing)

The only gripe is that the battery has started to lose life now after 12months. Also the battery management is odd - the other day the PC died when it said it had 40 minutes of life.

If the battery was sorted this could have had 5 stars....

Overall, the performance is pretty decent for a budget laptop. Probably not best for gaming, but quite capable for development. The keyboard problems should never have made it to the market - this would indicate little usability testing by Samsung. If I am doing anything but basic emailing, I have to use a USB keyboard, as it really is that annoying to use. Even as I write this review, I have had to correct the lack of spaces being inserted many times. This alone makes me regret the purchase - if I had tested this out beforehand, I would not have bought it.