Oddly enough, I haven’t owned a computer for the last two years. Ever since the very grim and very heavy Dell desktop that I bought from a second hand shop in Madrid started making a dim mangling noise, in 2008, I’ve relied on a combination of my work laptop and my iPhone.

But along with my entry card, my discounted gym membership and pension contributions, I’m going to have my work laptop taken off me when I leave my job. And having worked with Dell, Apple, Acer, Asus, Lenovo and all the others over the past few years, you’d have imagined that I’d have a good idea what to buy to replace it.

Not at all.

This post, then, is just a quick plug for the Samsung Q330 that I arrived back from Tottenham Court Road with last Saturday afternoon.

This is what I was after: something light but quick, with a comfortable keyboard, good screen and all the software packages that I use (which pretty much means Office and a glut of downloadable online packages).

I narrowly avoided buying a MacBook Pro, was tempted by the powerful Acer Aspire and didn’t like the HP or Sony laptops at all.

So, what can I say about the Samsung Q330 for anyone thinking about buying it? Well, it’s fast (with an Intel i3 processor. At just 13.3 inches across, it pretty small and easy to lug about. It’s design owes quite a bit to Apple’s MacBook Pro itself (the tidy black lid hides an otherwise silvery case and its keyboard could easily have been ripped out of Jonathan Ive’s notepad). It’s just about £400 cheaper.

All in all, I’m quite happy with it. There’s some photos up at the top of this post, along with some of our designer, Cat, bashing up her old MacBook, which was lots of fun.