You’ll see a lot of hype surrounding the 3.06GHz Pentium 4, and doubtless you’ll see benchmark scores for the new processor. If you do, regard them with a heavy degree of skepticism because all is not rosy with this chip.

MSI's new motherboard is based on the Intel 865, or Springdale chipset, heralding the arrival of a host of new technologies (such as support for dual-channel DDR-RAM, AGP 8x and SATA) in Pentium 4 boards. These technologies have been commonplace in Althon boards for more than six months, and it's been an agonizing wait for many Pentium 4 fans.

There are many things that are given the 'instant' moniker, but usually products from the IT world are not among their number. Slow PC boot times (whatever happened to instant-on PCs?) and a whole mess of configurations takes the instant gratification out of most technology...

ATI gives the integrated graphics world a kick in the arse, John Gillooly feels the vibrations.

This 4-megapixel camera is a good point-and-shooter with a generous 2.2in preview LCD on the back and good one-handed operation. Its auto shooting modes work well, and the menus are extremely user-friendly with large icons and simple choices.

The compact EasyShare DX6490 is one of Kodak's latest in their DX high performance, consumer range of cameras. Featuring a 4.23MP CCD (with 4MP effective), the camera is capable of capturing images at up to 2,304 x 1,728 resolution, which places it at the higher end of the consumer digital camera spectrum.

The Excel G736 notebook from Protac is a desktop replacement, and as well as better-than-normal notebook specifications it also comes with the other traditional trapping of a desktop replacement notebook: it's big, it's chunky, and it's heavy.

While the epithet 'multimedia PC' used to be bandied about to over-hype any PC in the mid-'90's that was capable of playing music, rudimentary video, and games, the descriptive was overused so much on sub-par PCs that the impact of any real multimedia capabilities was diminished in the wash of pretenders.

The JoyBook 8000 marks the first attempt by BenQ to enter what some might argue is a crowded notebook market. BenQ's stance on the JoyBook is different from other notebook manufacturers though, as it won't be selling the JoyBook as 'just another notebook', but will instead market it totally as a digital lifestyle product.

The 650 really picks up where the 600 left off, and while it doesn't look too different to the eye, many of the changes are under the hood or subtle manipulations of the 600's design. It runs the new Palm OS 5.4 and has a much faster 312MHz Intel PXA270 processor, but the most immediate difference is the screen: it's now double the resolution at 320 x 320.

Intel's 865G chipset (codenamed Springdale), is almost identical to the 875 (Canterwood), and is designed to support the new Intel Pentium 4 processor with Hyper-Threading as well as the 800MHz frontside bus (FSB). It also includes 8x AGP, USB 2.0 and Serial ATA support.

SiS's 648 is one of the oldest chipsets on test here, and parallels many of the features of the Intel 845. It still has AGP 8x, 533MHz FSB and DDR333 support, though.

The 2,400 x 4,800dpi Astra 6700 offers good core functionality without many special features.

This is not the first 'desknote' that we've reviewed (see Protac DeskNote, June 2002, page 37) but in our estimation the Aspire 1703SC is the first system that truly expounds the virtues of true desknote-ism.

Dell's OptiPlex range is aimed at the corporate market, and traditionally bog-standard and boring boxes with little imagination and componentry to match, but the OptiPlex SX260 is a totally different beast.

After January's shenanigans with this system, it's nice to have it back in the testing Labs. My initial impressions haven't changed: this is one mean system that will handle anything you throw at it, and the benchmarks back that claim.

The D900T has to be one the most impressively kitted out notebooks we've ever reviewed. Now, before you go running off with a fist full of readies, this notebook isn't available as such to the general public. Rather, resellers of Todaytech's notebooks can order them in whatever configuration you want. Or if you'd rather -- and we quite like this option -- you can order the notebook stripped of most options, and configure your own from spare parts or cheaper parts if you think you can do better on pricing.

When we last compared sub-$2,500 projectors (December 2003) Dell was unable at the time to supply us with a review model. We were eager to see what their brand new sub-$2,000 projector was capable of, but it's taken it a while to complete the circuitous route to our offices.

While not unfamiliar with barebones PCs and small components designed to take your PC out of the study and into the lounge room, the MSI MEGA PC is the first out-of-the-box system we've reviewed that would snuggle right in amongst your hi-fi components.

Featuring an optical resolution of 4,800 x 2,400dpi, the 6800 is the most expensive scanner in our roundup.