While the epithet 'multimedia PC' used to be bandied about to over-hype any PC in the mid-'90's that was capable of playing music, rudimentary video, and games, the descriptive was overused so much on sub-par PCs that the impact of any real multimedia capabilities was diminished in the wash of pretenders.

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

The future, they say, is based on the Internet and mobile computing.

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

Looking sleek and a little smaller than your average midi tower, the t134a sits on top of the Pavilion series. This machine is a powerful home/office PC – not rigged purely for gaming.

The iPAQ's evolution is almost complete. The first signs came with the H1940, a Pocket PC that finally managed to be good looking, tiny and powerful - and it even included Bluetooth. But the H4150, while looking rather similar, makes the H1940 look almost Stone Age, with HP squeezing WLAN into the package, upping the processor speed to 400MHz and improving the screen still further.

HP is adamant that the digital home of the future (and now for that matter) has a midi-tower PC in it next to the TV.

A versatile and compact tablet PC with stunning battery life, but we do have a few usability complaints.

Attractively small and aggressively priced, the Ultra Slim is an interesting proposition for businesses

The best convertible tablet we’ve seen great performance and great design at a decent price.

Reasonable performance, great features and good battery life all make this a decent business ultraportable. But Lenovo’s X60 is better.

Right now, this is the best bargain to be had in the notebook world.

If there was a PDA king, this would be it. HP includes everything in the iPAQ H5550 including 802.11b, Bluetooth and fingerprint recognition. Most importantly, this is the first PDA we've seen to run Pocket PC 2003

Impressive quality, considering the bargain basement price. We're talking sub $1000 here.

The HP K80 takes our Quality Award this month, nudging ahead of the competition in all our speed, quality and features tests. Alongside the HP PSC750, the K80s highly specified 2,400 x 1,200 inkjet printer produced noticeably top-quality colour prints.

HP Ipaq

A decent 20in widescreen LCD for the office, with a flexible stand and USB hub. But it is expensive.

It’s great value and will tempt some people thanks to its size and multimedia abilities.

A good laptop for business, with superb design touches but some unfortunate omissions.