Media Center is here but Tim Dean thinks it totally and utterly doesn't live up to expectations, but there might be some hope for the future.

Add a TV tuner and you can make the most of Media Center, which is bundled with Vista Home Premium and Ultimate.

What will you be buying, using and drooling over this year? Tim Dean looks at the astounding products and technologies due to hit in the next 12 months.

We provide the commentary on a bruising eight-round battle between Vista and Tiger.

Tim Dean thinks we need to look to notebook technology to save the day

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.

Altech's Maestro Pro is a Home Theatre PC based on Microsoft's Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005.

Microsoft has started from scratch with Vista’s networking features — but are they any better than those found in XP? We log-in and find out.

The Qosmio is the absolute pinnacle in multimedia notebooks. It brings everything you need for a good Windows XP Media Center Edition (MCE) system and squeezes it into a notebook form-factor. Albeit a large notebook form-factor. Yes the Qosmio is a huge and heavy notebook, but it's not nearly as heavy as it would have been if it was packed with desktop internals as many desknotes of this size usually are.

Flexible, beautifully designed and reasonably priced. An excellent attempt to attract the masses.

We help you determine whether your current PC can run Vista and which version of the operating system best suits your needs.

A Media Center PC and 32in LCD TV all-in-one.

Impressive and free antivirus and antispyware package

Vista’s Network and Sharing Center brings networking, file sharing and discovery options together, making it far easier to diagnose problems.

Vendor to support XP Home and Media Center Edition for an extra five years.

A very tidy solution for streaming your downloaded video to the TV, without the need for a full Media Center PC.

A fantastic Media Center PC at an extraordinary price.

A decent PC with media abilities bolted on, transforming this into a good lounge machine.

Windows Media Center Edition (MCE) 2005 was launched with quite a bit of fanfare late last year, and not least of all because it was the first time in its 18 month life Australians could buy systems based on the OS.

The notebook winner this month was a close call. Two units stood out as being at the top of the multimedia field: the Pioneer D47K and the Acer Aspire 1802WSM. Feature-by-feature they were very closely matched, but we chose the Pioneer for several reasons, one of which was its advanced media capabilities.