The Sony PEG-NV70X Clie marks a welcome shift in the PDA landscape from the Pocket PC, with a few firsts up its sleeves.

This is the second Smartphone we've reviewed (O2's Xphone, March 2004, page 55) but, unlike the Xphone, the Motorola MPx200 features a clamshell design. Smallish, black and sleek, the MPx200 is a Tri-band GSM 900/1800/1900 phone with GPRS which enables email, SMS, MMS and WAP capabilities.

The 650 really picks up where the 600 left off, and while it doesn't look too different to the eye, many of the changes are under the hood or subtle manipulations of the 600's design. It runs the new Palm OS 5.4 and has a much faster 312MHz Intel PXA270 processor, but the most immediate difference is the screen: it's now double the resolution at 320 x 320.

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.

The key differentiator with the PDA2k over other PDAs is the whopping 128MB of RAM in-built for media and files. On top of this there's a separate 64MB ROM for the OS and an SD/MMC slot for further expansion.

Digital video is a rising star, with DV camera sales increasing from year to year and digital software sales to consumers and enthusiasts alike also on the rise. It's a welcome trend, to be sure, but with all such trends there is a widening gap between the digital haves and the have-nots, with no easy way to share video between.

There's one thing that's immediately noticeable and annoying about the otherwise superb Xphone II: it's incredibly slow to turn on and boot up. We clocked about 72 seconds from pressing the power button to connecting to our service, with about a minute of that taken up by just booting the phone's OS.

Adobe has been riding high on the success of the portable document format (PDF), and the Acrobat creation tools needed to generate them. Later in the year version 6.0 will be launched, but in the meantime we have a preview of Acrobat Professional 6.0 Beta.

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

In what is an interesting first time foray into the crowded PDA market, Acer is hedging its bets by releasing both Palm- and Pocket PC-based PDAs. It's a curious gambit to be sure, and we're content to see which PDA branch blossoms while the other withers.

Your first thought might be, what has MS-DOS got to do with anything these days, but when you consider the huge existing install-base of Windows 95 and 98 machines, plus the number of problems you can still have with Windows that can be solved with a bit of command line typing, you'd be surprised at what a handy reference this book can be.

Taking over on the innovation and user friendliness from where the original iPod left off, the iPod Mini features similar design to the original, but is in every regard smaller.

The iBook represents the budget- end of Apple's notebook range. Its sturdy white lid, and solid base give it a quality feel, and it even manages to come in at only 2.5kg, including power pack.

You’ll see a lot of hype surrounding the 3.06GHz Pentium 4, and doubtless you’ll see benchmark scores for the new processor. If you do, regard them with a heavy degree of skepticism because all is not rosy with this chip.

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.