Consistently attracting one of the largest online groups is the first person shooter (FPS) genre. While the flavours vary, most FPSes boil down to the player moving around three-dimensional maps, pick

It would be misleading to imply that FPS games are the only game in town when talking about player numbers. While the total number of gamers who could be classed as online role-playing gamers first an

Half-life to share its platform with Doom.

Half-life to share its platform with Doom.

Half-life to share its platform with Doom.

A fantastic specification notebook with all the trimmings you'd expect to find on more expensive notebooks, the Joybook 8100-V13 has a 15.4in widescreen WXGA with native 1280 x 800 resolution. With ATI's Mobility RADEON 9600 graphics, boasting 64MB dedicated video memory, it's great for DVD playback or gaming -- the unit returned 9,502 marks under 3DMark01SE Pro, more than enough to provide comfortable gameplay with a decent number of fps even in recent games. BenQ has gone as far as to include not just a DVD-ROM for DVD movie playback, but an optical DVD writer, capable of 2-speed DVD+R media writing, ideal for both business archiving or for personal backup.

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.

Despite sports-mad Australia having a strong market for sports games and flight combat simulators, this popularity does not appear to be reflected in the numbers of people playing online. The main exc