While 64-bit computing has been around for a while (for the two of you who could afford Intel's Itanium, and now Itanium II processors), the dream of 64-bittery for the humble home system has been a long time coming.

It's the first expansion pack to PC Authority's Game of the Year, and it's a worthy expansion.

It's a sign of the times when Compaq's Aero 8000 runs Windows CE in a box bigger than a Sharp PC-A250 (reviewed issue 23, p86) running Windows 98. So what's the big idea? Windows CE uses no moving parts, while software in ROM means immediate start-up times, high reliability, and long battery life all highly desirable qualities in a portable.

While AMD has been waving hybrid 32/64-bit CPUs for some time now, speculation has risen over when Intel would unleash their product onto an already expecting market. Here it is, Intel's newest addition to their Extreme Edition clocking in at an impressive 3.73GHz and boasting a 2MB L3 cache.

An old standard, but one that still provides decent performance at a great price.

Revolutionary features and stunning power: for anyone lucky enough to have the cash, the Lenovo ThinkPad W700ds is the ultimate mobile workstation

New image editing tools and a more powerful library mode makes Lightroom 2 compelling. It's also compatible with Vista 64-bit.

A cheap, lightweight choice for single-core applications, but you get the performance you pay for.

One of the best lightweight document editors available

The Athlon XP 3200+ will probably be the last Barton-core desktop processor to come from AMD before the launch later this year of the Athlon 64, its desktop 64-bit processor.

Both the fastest and the priciest card on test.

An immensely powerful card, tempered by flaky drivers.

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

The FX-55 is AMD's top performer. It's a 2.6GHz beast that will eat through current and future games and applications. Its architecture is based on that of the FX-53, which in turn was based on the first generation FX-51, and AMD has come a long way in bringing 64-bit to the desktop.

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.

Chance or coincidence? AMD releases the Athlon 64, specifically targeted at the consumer performance market, and only days later Intel announces a secret processor aimed squarely at the same MHz-hungry community: the Pentium 4 Extreme Edition (P4EE).

It’s missing a couple of key features, but nevertheless, Vegas Pro is highly sophisticated and quick to use for serious video editors.

A new behavioural analysis module only adds to AVG’s capabilities, although it isn’t the most elegant marriage

If you don’t care about weight, this is what a laptop should be