Functionality

If you pull away from the media capabilities for the moment and get stuck into what the actual notebook is designed for, you will quickly discover just how capable a notebook the G40 is.

The big foot print of the notebook gives you a big keyboard which is an absolute dream to work with if you're doing a lot of typing. With the size of the keyboard it would have been nice to get a dedicated num pad which could have been done with a bit of re-modeling. With the location of the HD-DVD drive however, it doesn't look like it would have been possible to push the volume control down anymore.

The high 1920 x 1200 resolution also manages to give us some serious desktop real estate, which is always nice. This resolution is generally reserved for desktop monitors of at least 24", so the dot pitch on the 17" display is very small and just looks ultra sharp.

There are a number of other cool little features on the G40 though; these include the fingerprint reader which you can use instead of conventional passwords. The speakers are absolutely fantastic and manage to pump out some real volume which is very nice. They don't have that really tinny feeling that is so common with notebook speakers.

With the 2GB of RAM and Dual Core Centrino processor, Vista manages to run like a dream. Everything is very responsive and almost instantaneous when you click on it. The massive amount of hard drive space also gives you the ability to really go crazy when it comes to application installations.