By Adli Yashir

THE Asus F6V has enough computing muscle, connectivity options and corporate-friendly features for the family room and the boardroom.

With its cool silver-and-black colour scheme, this notebook is classy. For the road warrior, this 2kg notebook with its 13.3-inch screen is an ideal travel companion.

Corporate types would also appreciate security features like a fingerprint scanner and software like the Asus Security Protect Manager.

The test machine comes with an Intel Core2 Duo 2.53GHz processor with 4GB DDR2 SDRAM. But to make a fair comparison with the other notebooks, we scale the memory down to 2GB. Other features include a 320GB hard disk, a built-in DVD burner and a webcam.

On the Windows Experience Index Processor performance, the score is a high 5.4 points - on par with the others.

Equipped with an ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3450 graphics chipset, the notebook scores a high 1,591 points on the 3DMark 06 benchtest. So, apart from the usual business applications, the F6V has just enough graphics muscle to run computer games like Command And Conquer.

With an extended battery pack, the notebook lasts 177 minutes or just under three hours - enough to play an epic DVD movie like Saving Private Ryan.

Good-to-have options include a HDMI port. While the three USB ports are nicely spaced apart, I don't particularly like the location of the headphone and microphone slots. This is because the headphone or microphone cables can get in the way when you open or close the optical drive tray.

But the combination of affordable price, excellent computing performance and features makes this notebook the DL Choice.

This article was first published in Digital Life, The Straits Times on Oct 15, 2008.