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.

A welcome update to the Sound Blaster that can deliver perceptibly better audio than onboard chips, but it goes beyond most people’s needs for PC audio.

Creative has raised the stakes again with the Audigy, this time from 16- to 24-bit sampling.

Flawless. Behold, the crème de la crème by Dell.

A beautiful image that comes at a terrible recommended retail price.

Perfect image fidelity - no expense spared.

There are much better speaker systems around than this one

The Vivicam 5 is a 24-bit 640 x 480 digital camera, which you can almost hide in the palm lf your hand.

Think of sound cards and chances are you're probably thinking of Creative. Thanks to its phenomenally successful Sound Blaster line of cards, Creative is easily the leader of consumer PC audio. The Sound Blaster Audigy 2 Platinum Ex is the latest in this range, and is by far the most feature rich. The question is do you need most of these features?

Creative has enjoyed a long reign as the driving force in consumer-grade PC audio for the better part of a decade.

Intel has been banging on about Centrino 2 lately, so it was good to finally get a chance to test the claims courtesy of a spanking new mid-range Centrino 2 M51 Va courtesy of ASUS.

Its longlife 24-hour battery makes it significantly less portable, but this laptop is classy in every sense of the word.

Good value if purchased with a plan, the telstra’s speed impresses

The Caplio G3 is a 3.24-megapixel compact digital camera featuring a maximum optical resolution of 2,048 x 1,536, 3x zoom and auto and manual focus. It records images to 8MB of internal memory, SD or MMC media. It is capable of audio and video capture, video-out, and it can connect to a computer via USB.

Cheap, easy to use and quick. But the quality on offer lets it down.

A comprehensive set of audio-editing tools, but not enough to justify the high price.

When we last looked at the Sound Blaster Audigy 2 (the Platinum Ex, June 2003) we were highly impressed by the soundcard and its many functions, but felt that there was perhaps too much on offer, leaving you with many unwanted, unused and unwarranted inclusions.

HP gets the best out of iSCSI with a smart backup appliance that’s easy to manage and good value for small businesses.

Regardless of the fact that it's stuck half way between value and performance, it's still a good card.

Great real-time performance, particularly with high definition footage. But the EDIUS Pro software still needs a few more features to usurp the competition.