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.

Are you kicking around an old clunky PC that looks like a relic from the Stone Age? Google Zeitgeist (www.google.com/press/zeitgeist.html) tells us that while Windows XP accounted for 46 percent of the OSs used to search Google during February 2004, 24 percent were still using Windows 98 and Windows 95, indicating there are still a lot of late-1990s PCs kicking around. Even if you’re running something from the 1GHz days, it’s probably time to think about an upgrade. But it can easily get to the point where you’re upgrading just about every component. In that case, you should seriously consider looking at the excellent bargains available in new PCs today.

We've taken seven top business PCs and run them through their paces to find out which should be your next upgrade.

Since the launch of PC Authority magazine 30 issues ago, we have placed an emphasis on the concept of computing in the real world. This means that all the PC hardware that passes through our Labs is t

Benchmarking PCs is a tricky business. You need to ensure that you stress the systems, but also that the results you get will be relevant in the real world. Previously we have relied heavily on BAPCo's SYSmark2002 for simulating home and office use, with programs such as Excel, Word, Outlook, and web content through Adobe Premiere and Macromedia Dreamweaver. However, due to SYSmark's history of instability as well as the sheer length of time it takes to complete a run, we have put it on the backburner in favour of PCMark04 for this Labs.

Small form factor PCs have been around for a while, and barebones PCs for even longer. Traditionally a barebones PC is a basic shell, including a case, power supply and motherboard at minimum, and occasionally tooled up with a few extras like RAM.

Unlike many of our performance-based Labs, business workstations are a whole different world of PCs, focusing not on the maximum number of frames per second, or how many overall points they can churn out in any given benchmarking utility.

Will home media centres do to the entertainment industry what video did to the radio star? With new technology reshaping our lounges, homes could soon become fully functional media hubs.

Unless youve been comatose for the last seven to eight years then you might have missed the growing fad for all things related to the Internet - that amorphous, heaving, abstract new medium that is in

Ultra-mobile PCs are the future of mobile computing according to Microsoft. Ross Burridge looks at the devices and the technology

Many people upgrade their PCs by adding the latest CPU or more memory, but leave their old hard disk in place. The humble hard disk is one of the slowest components inside a PC (in fact, only optical

It's been a damn long time since PC Authority Labs team last saw the beanches lined end to end with PCs, but finally the time is ripe for some good ol' PC action.

The results of the latest Australian Bureau of Statistics Small Business Survey were released earlier this year, and they contain some interesting facts about IT and small business in Australia. In Ju

In the market for a new gaming rig for playing the latest games? PC Authority has the answer to your gaming performance woes with five of the hottest machines around.

Evaluating barebones systems is quite different from performance-based testing using benchmarks. As such, we opted to do a feature-based roundup, covering all aspects of the hardware, including but not limited to: build quality, ease of install, and included feature sets.

From Celerons to Core i7s, Semprons to Phenom IIs, David Bayon tests Mainsteam desktop processors and finds the best budget, mid-range and enthusiast (gaming) choice for you.

We put seven NAS drives from the likes of Maxtor, Netgear, Synology, Thecus, Western Digital and Iomega to the test to find out which is best for storing your files

Hard drives used to be the coolest thing - in the olden days, when all home PCs were slow, a hard drive was often a measure of how 'good' your computer was. For quite sometime, however, processor and graphics technology stole the limelight. Hard drives have been taken for granted - an ambient component that accompanies your sparkling graphics card and gi-normous heat sink.

High-capacity desktop drives have never been so affordable. Darien Graham-Smith puts 23 to the test to find the best

Once again it is time for the PC Authority Labs team to cast their critical eye over the latest and greatest that Intel has to offer, in terms of PCs based around its new Pentium 4 processor. One reas