There's no denying the appeal of broadband internet access and yet for a smart country Australia has been falling way behind our international counterparts.

It turns out that Microsoft [I]is[/I] bringing out Windows XP Media Center Edition in Australia, but until such time as it materialises -- and Microsoft Australia is being very sketchy on the dates -- those of us looking to integrate our PC media files with our televisions and hi-fi systems have to turn to bridging solutions.

Digital radio in Australia is a slow burner. While many people are investing in digital set-top boxes and digital displays for the purpose of watching digital TV, not too many people are jumping on the digital radio bandwagon.

We've traversed the acronym laden landscape of VoIP for you, and present you with the PC Authority guide to VoIP: what it is, what kinds of services you can find, what savings you can expect to make and how it is that you can go about setting up VoIP for yourself at home.

The o2 Xphone is one of the first phones in Australia to use Microsoft's new embedded SmartPhone 2003 OS, which is a highly, highly pared down and customised version of Windows XP. Anyone familiar with the Windows interface shouldn't have much trouble operating this phone. Having said that however, it does take some getting used to when navigating the menu systems, but it doesn't actually take long to get up to speed.

PDA sales are flattening, and have been for some time, but it doesn't mean that the sector's dead. Smartphones have their place and are increasing in sales in Australia, but they can't always offer the power or flexibility of a good PDA.

Although similar products have been available (with much controversy) in the US for a few years, the Samsung DVD-H40A is the first Personal Video Recorder (PVR) to reach our sunny shores.

The X800XT is at the cutting edge of gaming technology at the moment, and no card demonstrates this better than the PowerColor X800XT. It combines a killer price (for a high-end card), excellent performance, and a respectable bundle.

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

The Microtek ScanMaker 4900 offers a high resolution of 4,800 x 2,400dpi and decent performance for a fair price.

With the exception of the badge on the lid, PC Club's Highlander is almost identical to both ModTech's and Targa's offerings.

19in widescreen LCD TV which shows much promise and is Dell’s first consumer offering in Australia. Spec-wise it looks quite good on paper, with 450cd/m2 brightness, 600:1 contrast ratio and 1280 x 768 widescreen resolution, and it doesn’t disappoint when fired up.

Will home media centres do to the entertainment industry what video did to the radio star? With new technology reshaping our lounges, homes could soon become fully functional media hubs.

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.

Although the Tablet PC was launched with much hype and fanfare, many media outlets have been sceptical as to the validity of the technology. However, the experience delivered by using a Tablet PC firsthand, for any length of time cannot help but impress. I myself went from cynical observer to total convert after trialling three tablets.

Finding a good PC or notebook for the family is not as hard as you might think. PC Authority  puts the latest models to the test.