The ASUS N50Vn-B1B is a 15.4-inch general-purpose laptop that our laptops expert, Cisco Cheng, sees as a good, versatile system that can serve the whole family. I tried it too and was impressed with what I saw, as well as by some unseen things--like its relatively modest price tag.

I like the brown (almost copperish) trim with the raining-dot pattern (which is duplicated on the default wallpaper) more than Cisco did, though I agree with him that it won't win any design awards. The laptop's 1,440-by-900 resolution widescreen is in the traditional 16:10 format, making the screen a little taller and not quite as wide as most new laptops whose 16:9 format screens mimic that of HDTVs. This shouldn't deter multitaskers, and the screen is plenty wide for things like budget spreadsheets.

The ASUS N50Vn-B1B is a desktop replacement model, weighing in at 6.7 pounds (which is luggable, though you probably wouldn't want to do so on a daily business) and sporting a fast yet energy-efficient 2.4-GHz Intel Core 2 Duo P8600 processor and a discrete Nvidia GeForce 9650M GT graphics card. Not only is it fine for editing photos and watching videos (everything I ran on it looked good and loaded quickly), the kids--and kids at heart--will like its 3D gaming chops, though it's not fast enough to run the most intensive games--such as Crysis and World in Conflict--at playable speeds. It has three USB ports, a FireWire, and an eSATA. Its optical drive is a standard dual-layer DVD burner. An HDMI-out port will let you pipe photos or video (including downloaded HD clips) to your LCD TV.

Folks watching their every penny will be glad to know that the ASUS N50Vn-B1B stacks up well in the bang-for-the-buck department. Although you can get models for less, you'd be hard pressed to find one with its feature range and quality performance parts at its price. As I write this, Newegg.com is selling the N50Vn-B1B for $1,149.