The ASUS is one tough little cookie. Its cover and palmrest are encased in brushed aluminium lending the unit a reassuring sense of rigidity and roadworthiness. The 15.4" screen is bright, and its default resolution of 1680x1050 makes text sharp but a little small to read unless up close. The unit also comes with a built in TV-tuner, and also sports a TV-antenna output.

In the sub-$2,000 category, we thought it would be negligent to leave Apple, and its popular eMac, out of the running. While we can't benchmark it head to head with the PCs, at least we can compare the features and see what alternatives there are to mainstream PCs in the world. Interestingly, the eMac (as its prefix implies) was originally intended for the education market, but it proved to be such a success it was cut loose into the broader retail market.

Both of these systems offer immense flexibility and decent value for money, although the Intel version wins out.

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

This system is one of the most well-rounded and pleasurable-to-use PCs of the bunch, thanks to quality peripherals and handy features, like front-mounted USB and headphone ports.

Buying a business PC, or indeed looking for a fleet of PCs for your business, can be a tricky enterprise at the best of times. While we've taken a lot of the hard work out of this for you with this guide to what's available, there are a few things you need to consider when shopping for your business.

An impressive touchscreen all-in-one PC for an equally impressive price, but the single-core Atom holds it back

A stylish and usable touchscreen PC that’s right at home in the living room. With Windows 7 promising touch-control, this could be the future of desktop PCs.

A very-well designed alternative to big beefy computers which make a lot of noise.

Custom design watercooling and some judicious overclocking make for a showstopping performance and price.

A flexible and powerful livingroom PC that ticks almost all the right boxes, as well as being great value.

Small form factor (SFF) PCs now have their foot well and truly in the home entertainment and IT/CE crossover market due largely to their aesthetics, functionality and quietness of operating volume. Westan's Biostar product looks to continue along these lines, offering a multimedia PC with all the performance of AMD's 64-bit desktop processor architecture.

When we sent out the call for multimedia systems we were expecting notebooks and PCs capable of DVD playback and some basic gaming. Pioneer not only cleared this bar with their submission - they raised it.

Nominating Sato as our winner for the desktop machines this month was fairly straightforward, especially when compared to deciding the outcome of the closely-fought notebook war. Because, even though the Sato was outdone by one or two systems in terms of performance, nothing beat it on pure value for money.

In the ever bloating world of mini barebones PCs there is a wide range of build quality and internal design to be witnessed. AOpen has been in the market for a while now, and the XC cube edition is one of the better designed systems in an area where quality can vary wildly from brand to brand.

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.

Swiping the hardware from the PC Authority test bench, we went about putting together our Shuttle XPC. Immediately we were confronted by one of the idiosyncrasies of small form factor PCs: squeezing all the hardware in the tiny space inside.

While not unfamiliar with barebones PCs and small components designed to take your PC out of the study and into the lounge room, the MSI MEGA PC is the first out-of-the-box system we've reviewed that would snuggle right in amongst your hi-fi components.

Every once in a while, we receive a PC for review thats an absolute pleasure to use, offering stunning quality and bucketloads of performance. XENONs Atomic 625 is all this and more.

No book ever gets published in multiple editions unless its outstanding. And thats certainly the case with Stephen Bigelows book, Troubleshooting, Maintaining & Repairing PCs. Now in its fifth edition, this comprehensive text (more than 1,500 pages plus a CD-ROM) covers just about everything youre ever likely to need to know about your PC.