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.

This dual-band access point is a perfect addition to an existing 802.11b network for those looking to stretch to the higher bandwidth of 802.11a without invalidating their previous hardware investments.

This is another dual-band 802.11a/802.11b PCMCIA adaptor that offers the best of both worlds.

The nForce2 is the only dual-channel memory controller available in the AMD pantheon. There are two Northbridges to choose from: one with the Integrated GeForce4 MX-class graphics (nForce2 GT) and one without (nForce2 ST). Both offer support for AGP 8x and up to DDR400 memory, although we recommend you use DDR266 or DDR333 memory in synchronous mode (DDR266 for chips with a 266MHz FSB, DDR333 for those with a 333MHz FSB) for best performance.

The 845PE was supposed to be Intel’s mainstream desktop DDR chipset, although the e7205 (the Granite Bay), and now the 865 and 875, have stolen much of its thunder with dual-channel DDR.

The cheapest system to be submitted for review in our performance roundup, it just goes to show that even $4000 will get you a hell of a lot of PC for your money. PCQUEST has also opted to go with a CoolerMaster case, both for its attractive looks and functionality, this housing able to hold a massive five optical drives and four hard disk drives, erring on the side of more is better.

The Gigabyte SINXP1394 is a little pricey, but supports SATA, IDE RAID and Hyper-Threading, as well as FireWire

Although the dual-band NETGEAR WAB501 was an excellent PCMCIA card and scored well, we rated the single-band 802.11a NETGEAR HA501 higher because of its ability to cope with dire signal conditions.

The IC7 offers support for up to 4GB of dual-channel DDR, delivering bandwidth of 4.8GB/s. Decked out with every port known to humanity, it has integrated FireWire; USB 2.0; SATA; 10/100 Ethernet and six-channel audio.

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.

Another inexpensive Soltek board that's not too heavy on the features, this KT400A board sports the bare minimum to scrape by, with six-channel audio, dual-USB 2.0 ports and ATA133 support.

Albatron's offering to the 865P family is bursting at the seams with features. SATA and IDE RAID, eight-channel audio, FireWire, dual-channel DDR, USB 2.0 and Gigabit Ethernet.

When we think of SiS graphics, we usually think of low cost, low-end cards or integrated offerings for the entry-level 2D market, with the possibility of some rudimentary 3D capabilities thrown in.

The 4PCA3+ packs a whopping six IDE slots and two SATA ports, perfect for a jumbo-sized array. A PCB-mounted LED displays error codes, great for quick boot troubleshooting, and the inclusion of Gigabit Ethernet and ECC DIMM support would make this the board of choice for a single processor server, while USB, dual-channel DDR and S/PDIF ports would set you up nicely for a home machine setup.

Alienware are fairly new to Australian shores, but for any PC-addict it's been hard to avoid their familiar little-green-men styling on the internet where Alienware cases are extremely popular among case-modding and PC-styling communities. They're finally here now, and the Area-51m 7700 is the first product through the PC Authority Labs doors.

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.

Never judge a book by its cover, they say, and nowhere does this apply better than to the Nokia 9210i Communicator.

Although this board is fairly small on features, such as lacking SATA and FireWire, it does offer a space-saving platform for building a first PC or for upgrading your current system and would make a decent but no frills workhorse.

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.

We’ve seen products like Silicon Memory’s ClearLight range of portable hard drives before, yet the ClearLight has some of the most solid yet attractive plastic housing we’ve reviewed.