A real prizefighter of a laptop: powerful, well-built and reasonably mobile, too

Epic plot and an intruiging mix of RPG and FPS make Mass Effect worth a look, though we can't help but see some similarity with Knights of the Old Republic.

Quad core at this price is fantastic, but it’s not as fast as it should be.

Another big name brand PC gets a cutting-edge, all-format, high-def optical drive capable of playing Blu-ray and HD DVD.

A fast, quiet, good-looking PC that's great value.

If you want a monstrously powerful laptop, look no further.

You'd have more fun sticking a pickaxe up your nose.

Fantastic design and highly-configurable power make this XPS useful, desirable and good value.

A stunning design backed up by great performance and good value for money.

Very fast for some applications, but poor gaming performance and strong competition reduces its appeal.

Dell’s first foray into using AMD processors is a modest performer, but fair value.

Nvidia’s 8800 GTX graphics card is the crowning glory of this very-fast, great-value, PC.

Fast and good value. Gamers and power users will like it.

It might lack style and cutting edge technology, but this 19" monster packs in power and features.

The creme de la creme of Athlon 64 products, the 4000+ is a socket 939 CPU with all the bells and whistles. This bad boy clocks in at 2.4GHz, features a 1MB L2 cache and 2GB HyperTransport memory interconnect to work in conjunction with its on-die memory controller.

Small form factor (SFF) PCs now have their foot well and truly in the home entertainment and IT/CE crossover market due largely to their aesthetics, functionality and quietness of operating volume. Westan's Biostar product looks to continue along these lines, offering a multimedia PC with all the performance of AMD's 64-bit desktop processor architecture.

When we sent out the call for multimedia systems we were expecting notebooks and PCs capable of DVD playback and some basic gaming. Pioneer not only cleared this bar with their submission - they raised it.

MSI's MegaBook L61OI lives up to its 'mega' moniker with a large 15.4-inch widescreen TFT, desktop CPU, excellent graphics and pumping audio. The model we looked at was a pre-production prototype notebook and as such was a little shaky and did not come with all the inclusions a final model will have. As a proof of concept, however, the notebook is quite good.

The problem with having a DVD player, cable TV or a VCR is that when you want to use them you’re usually relegated to the lounge room where they’re set up, and not the secondary comfort of a spare room, the kitchen or your bedroom.

The IBM NetVista M42 business PC offers a 2.4GHz Pentium 4 with 256MB DDR RAM and a 40GB hard disk.