As far as performance is concerned, the Emagen Lightspeed XPS is a fairly competitive offering. It sits in the middle of the pack as far as price is concerned, but managed to sit at second to third place in most benchmarks - it even came top of the class in 3DMark05. The 3.6Ghz Pentium 4 certainly helped there. And the fact that it’s $600 cheaper than the Pioneer system also works in its favour.

A relative newcomer to the PC Authority Labs, Emagen has still managed to make a big impact

Intel’s push on Centrino notebook branding has only made it so far in the six months since its introduction. So far prices have been high for Centrino notebooks, although Emagen looks set to change this mindset, now offering the N1000 model as a cost-effective alternative option to top of the line name brand notebooks with all the bells and whistles.

The Athlon64 has only been out a short while, and although it's an excellent processor, from all accounts it's not selling as well as it should be.

Emagens offering was the fastest PC overall this month.

Housed in a fairly attractive albeit plain chassis, this machine comes shipped with performance where it counts as well as plenty of potential for the tweakers and serial upgraders. A Pentium 4 3.0GHz processor is impressive enough for a system with a price tag under $2,500, but to also include a DVD burner, TFT display, good quality 2.1 speaker set up and wireless keyboard and mouse combo is previously unheard of.

Fastest PC

Although heavily kitted out with an ATI Mobility RADEON 9700 featuring 128MB of dedicated video memory, 1.5GHz Pentium M and half a gigabyte of PC2700 DDR, the Zephyra XT finished in the lower half for overall placement.

If you're looking for a computer geared for gaming, the Vitesse is it. If you think that a Pentium 4C rumbling at 3GHz with a massive 1GB of DDR400 RAM has a nice ring to it, its gamers'-poetry when you add in a RADEON 9800 PRO.

Emagens entry is a fairly mixed system, with some excellent and some average features

Built around the same notebook housing as the Emagen Zephyra XT, this attractive high shine lid is one of the better looking notebook covers we've seen, making this product appear out of its price range.

It's inside that you find a HyperThreaded Pentium 4 3GHz processor with an 800MHz FSB, plus a gig of DDR400 RAM in dual-channel configuration.

The CWS SuperPro S3 has some very nice components under the hood: its equipped with the fastest Athlon XP in this months crop (a 2100+), 512MB of PC2100 DDR and an 80GB HDD.

Acer has sacrificed overall power in favour of features with this moderate little system.

The only PC in our mini roundup this month to feature a rather boring beige case, it more than makes up for its looks with blistering performance at a very reasonable price. Inclusion of thumb screws will allow you to get at your hardware quickly and without the need for tools. Always handy for those of us that like to fiddle frequently.

Physically similar to the Scorpion Z-Box system with its black anodised midi tower, this unit also features a pair of both front-mounted audio 3.5mm sockets and USB ports, perfect for quick plug and play of both bus and externally powered devices such as keyboards, printers, joysticks and removable USB pen drives.