The $1000 PC was once regarded as the Holy Grail of computing, but now almost every manufacturer has one.

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

Sony typically asks a little more than their competitors for similar products, but this usually pays off in the quality of workmanship and the reliability associated with most Sony products. The Sony VAIO VGN-S28GP is an extremely well-built notebook and should provide rock-solid performance for years to come.

With the X800's and 6800's hogging limelight, a new battle has begun for affordable, mid-performance cards -- the 6600GT's versus the X700's -- and ASUS has stepped up to the plate with its Extreme AX700Pro.

The X700 is a relative newcomer to the PCI Express fold, and was released by ATI in response to NVIDIA's 6600 chipset. When comparing all the X700 cards that we received, we found each had its own pro's and con's, and this made them all decent propositions.

The Shuttle XPC is an icon of SFF design, and there are as many iterations as there are chipsets.

FIC's Condor has answered the call this month, offering gamers an easy to upgrade system, wrapped up in a one of the most innovative cases we've seen.

When it comes to accessories, the Aspire has one of the best bundles supplied for this roundup: including an MCE remote and a radio/TV antenna! It also has a decent specification list: 3Ghz Pentium 4; 160GB HDD; and 512MB RAM. The only sticking point here, amongst all this multimedia goodness, is the inclusion of the Mobility X300 video card. It's like building a Ferrari and installing a two-stroke motor. It doesn't make much sense.

The Acer Aspire has a lot of handy multimedia functions that help it work as a desktop replacement/media unit. One of the Aspire’s main selling points is the Arcade feature, which is a Windows Media Centre clone. A button on the notebook fascia opens Arcade, bypassing the Windows OS and enabling all media player functions: DVD, MP3 etc. It works quite well but isn’t as graphically stunning as MCE.

The notebook winner this month was a close call. Two units stood out as being at the top of the multimedia field: the Pioneer D47K and the Acer Aspire 1802WSM. Feature-by-feature they were very closely matched, but we chose the Pioneer for several reasons, one of which was its advanced media capabilities.

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.

The Twinhead Efio is a mixed beast. It has some very good features, such as an all-magnesium casing and ATI Mobility 9700, but it also has some middling features, like a relatively slow 1.8GHz Intel processor and 4:3 screen. The unit is well made and well set out however.

The BenQ Joybook 7000 v07 is a multimedia PC with some MCE-like abilities. It comes loaded with QMedia Center - another MCE clone - and a PCMCIA-sized remote. QMedia operates much like MCE in that there is a main page – coloured BenQ purple of course - from which the usual Pictures and Videos icons enable navigation of the user’s media files.

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.

Noise levels and heat dissipation are two important factors in the design of small form factor (SFF) PCs. Low noise is particularly important in the growing home theatre PC market, where designs such as the Soltek EQ3801 are increasingly popular due their attractively small size.

The Aspire is a very good unit with several features which enhance its usability. It will suit on-the-go entertainment and productivity, at a price that won't burn your wallet.

As one of the first native PCI-Express cards, the 6600GT has generated quite a bit of excitement: finally, a mid-price card that promises close to high end performance. So the fact that the card is finally available in AGP is good news for those willing to keep their existing AGP kit.

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.