Asus W3: where's the catch?

It may be small, it may be sweet, but baby it can sure move its polygons around the screen at high speed. Slackers looking for a gaming laptop they can pass off as a work machine are going to love the Asus W3. We've installed Thief and Hitman on it and they both fly like hawks.

Asus has chosen a highly reflective LCD on the W3 -- what were they thinking? The Toshiba Qosmio is blighted by a similar flaw. Most of what you see on the screen is your own reflection staring right back at you. For the narcissist this is a dream come true - for the rest of us it's scary.

Laptop manufacturers need to shake themselves awake and go back to the days of anti-reflective screen coatings so that we can concentrate on things properly. A glossy screen might look good on the shelf in PC World, but get this laptop home and you may rue the glossy day you were dazzled.

Aside from being a surprisingly capable games machine, the Asus's other unusual feature is its lack of catch. The hinged LCD screen section just rests on the top of the keyboard section. At first we thought this was a magnetised latch, but it's not, it's just held there by gravity. This could cause problems when you transport it -- the other junk you lug about in your bag might get wedged between the screen and keyboard and maul the LCD. We'll road test the little beastie and let you know. -CS

Update: this review is now live here.