Centrino notebook for a mere 400 quid, anyone? That's the deal Germany's Medion is offering British buyers next month when Woolworths begins selling its latest machine. Buy direct and you get the chance to have your favourite picture or logo fitted on the lid.

The MIM 2220 incorporates a 1.7GHz Intel Pentium M 735A processor - not the most up-to-date CPU in these times of Core Duos, let alone the upcoming mobile Core 2 Duo, but a notch up on the Celeron Ms found in so many low-end laptops.

The £400 inc. VAT price tag gets you a 15.4in widescreen WXGA display, dual-layer DVD burner and 802.11g Wi-Fi. It only ships with 256MB of DDR 2 SDRAM, but you can upgrade it yourself to 1GB if you wish. It has a 40GB hard drive.

The laptop also features three USB ports, a Firewire connector, 10/100Mbps Ethernet, a VGA port, TV-out, a 56Kbps model and a S/P DIF digital audio port. Medion has pre-installed Windows XP Media Center Edition, Cyberlink PowerDVD, Nero burning software and Microsoft Works - but the less said about the latter the better.

Medion will charge an extra £45 for the custom print job - you'll be able to upload your pic at the company's website. It will then emboss the image onto your notebook.

The MIM 2220 goes on sale on 1 August. ®