Once upon a time not too long ago, your average inkjet printer had a single tricolour ink cartridge. Of course, the print quality was fairly ordinary, but it did the job. Today, with digital cameras the norm and home users wanting to print their own photographs, your photo printer may have as many as eight different ink cartridges.

The latest iteration of the Pentium 4, code named Prescott, is an interesting development for a few reasons. First off, it represents Intel's entry to the world of 90nm (90 nanometre, or 0.09 micron) fabrication for processors. For the uninitiated, all this means is the size of individual components on the processor core have been shrunk to even smaller levels. It's a natural part of processor evolution to shrink the size of components, as it allows more transistors to be packed into a smaller space, reduces heat and resistance, and this all leads to faster CPUs.

There was a time when Pinnacle dominated the PC video-editing market. But, after its initial success with the DV500, the advent of sophisticated realtime editing seemed to leave the company behind. While it was a good product, the company’s Pro-ONE arrived when competitive products from Matrox and Canopus had been available for some time. The Pinnacle Edition PRO 5 is an entirely different matter.

As well as being the first company to launch EIDE DVD burners into the mainstream IT marketplace, Pioneer is the company behind DVD-R and DVD-RW recordable media formats. In the last couple of years, it has fought hard to stave off competition from Philips' rival standard, DVD+RW, and until recently buying a DVD recorder meant locking yourself into one standard over the other.

Gigacube is a brand we haven't seen in the Labs before, but the RADEON 9800 PRO card managed a decent showing.

The original Audigy brought ASIO drivers, SB1394 (IEEE 1394) and EAX Advanced HD to the masses, but it was criticised because some people felt betrayed by the 24-bit 96kHz specification, which referred to the DACs rather than the sampling rate.

HITACHI PD32-A2100

TFT screens are notoriously expensive to manufacture and even more expensive to purchase in comparison to their conventional CRT counterparts.

Almost all computer monitors and TVs use the same technology that first appeared in the 1940s: the CRT. How both consumers and manufacturers would love a viable flat panel display. LCDs dont make the grade: its too hard - and expensive - to produce LCDs larger than 20 inches diagonal.

Samsung has just released its latest range of Optic Mice to present a solution to the problem of mouse grime. Samsungs range of Optic Mice, or as it likes to call them the Beetle Family, has been touted by Samsung as being highly durable and stylish.