Super portability is definitely the way of the future and Rome's Ultrasm combined MP3/voice recorder takes a step in that direction.

Well kitted out with a vast array of accessories, Philips' offering to the MP3 marketplace is the EXP213 CD MP3 player.

Compact form factor and functionality are the two most important features when determining an audio player's portability.

IRiver's multi-codec CD player has all the necessary traits required of a high-end personal audio centre. Arriving with a bundle of goodies, the iMP-400 is a stylish unit, with an interesting burgundy and chrome finish.

Currently only available to OEMs, although it should be released later to the consumer market, Seagate’s Momentus hard drive upgrade kit is designed to boost the common bottleneck issue of hard drive performance in notebooks, tablet PCs, digital audio players and blade servers.

Even with falling hardware prices, the expense and yet to be finalised format war rages on with DVD writing technology deterring many a consumer. DVD+R/RW appear to be making headway gradually with both format flexibility and hardware integration into next generation platforms.

The world is Paragon City, in which costumed heroes patrol the skies or walk the streets.

Gone are the innovations introduced in the first game – allowing the player to upgrade specific unit traits via the unit itself; the exciting feel of progressing from one epoch to another and general playability.

The emphasis is placed on careful investigation of each environment and the wise selection of appropriate weapons and tools.

Dan Chiappini delves into multimedia jargon in our monthly tech term glossary.

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.

DVD burning has been around for some time now and became widely accepted for its superior storage capacity over its little brother the CD. While we see single layer formatted 4.7GB discs now getting into the 12-speed writing range, the real action is dual-layer burning.

Wrapped in an attractive silver chassis, this sexy looking notebook is easy on the eye, and features all of the latest gadgets. The left-hand side of the machine features the usual legacy parallel and DB9 monitor out for use with an external monitor, although both are hidden beneath a rubber cover so as not to ruin the smooth clean lines of this housing.

We find this model hovering in the no-man's-land between desktop replacement and notebook. Its large form factor and huge screen come at the expense of weight, while the wireless and large battery do make it viable for users on the move.

The control is simple.

We know you want to play games, so we've put 18 PCI Express graphics cards under the microscope to see who really does the job the best.

It's not often that a company releases a product that is as functional as it is stylish, and can wow the masses in droves. Samsung's D500 does just this, combining the looks of its last generation E800 slide phone and a feature set to rival anything currently on the market.

The X800XT PE is ATI's flagship technology, and its main change over the standard X800 XT is a core frequency increase from 500MHz to 520MHz, and a memory increase from 500MHz to 560MHz. Consequently, it performs better than the standard X800 XT's, topping all the benchmarks and achieving a phenomenal 26588 marks in 3DMark01 in 1024 x 768.

Widescreen notebooks are the way of the future, really they are. With entertainment now proficiently done on the go, why would we go back to limited 4:3 aspect ratio? It's far easier to work on two spreadsheets concurrently in widescreen without needing to alt tab like a madman. Toshiba, like many manufacturers, has seen this need and provided such a product.

On receiving this unit, we were impressed by the mammoth 15.4in widescreen display. Although sceptical of its ability to perform given its monster display size, we were proven wrong at every turn, with the 8600 performing similarly to the more expensive Toshiba Tecra S1 Notebook (July 2003 page 40). Absolutely bursting at the gills with features, this Notebook boasts an array of connectivity options including side mounted FireWire and IrDA, while on the rear of the unit we find two USB and legacy serial, parallel and S-Video ports.