A good-looking, ergonomically excellent laptop with a wealth of multimedia capabilities for home users.

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

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.

Chunky, powerful and intimidating. Everything you want in a PC, but not what you'd want in a media centre.

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.

The Qosmio is the absolute pinnacle in multimedia notebooks. It brings everything you need for a good Windows XP Media Center Edition (MCE) system and squeezes it into a notebook form-factor. Albeit a large notebook form-factor. Yes the Qosmio is a huge and heavy notebook, but it's not nearly as heavy as it would have been if it was packed with desktop internals as many desknotes of this size usually are.

A stunning way to enjoy HD DVD, but the wonderful design and features come at a price

Any way you look at it, ITC’s Millennia 7350 is a monster.

Dell's 6400 is a great value mid-range notebook with very few weaknesses. The support is the icing on the cake.

While we wait with bated breath for the imminent (or was that eventual?) release of Microsoft Media Centre into Australia, the number of companies cashing in on the media functionality of next generation consumer electronics is growing quickly.

The format wars continue as Blu Ray comes to a monster laptop at a monster price.

Powered by an Intel Pentium-M 1.6GHz, the Modtech Civic Diamond 1600W Centrino notebook has a decent core specification, including a useful 512MB DDR RAM, 40GB of disk space and an ATI Mobility RADEON 9000 card offering 64MB of non-shared memory.

An adequate Media Centre PC, but Asus’ competitor blows it out of the water.

Good features, good quality and good value - it’s also the fastest ultraportable we’ve seen.

This rather small Centrino-powered notebook from Fujitsu has been designed for students and the hip-crowd; those that want something that's capable of work and entertainment, is not too large or heavy to carry, and that can easily balance on a café table between text books and a hot latte.

An impressive attempt at a good-value portable PC, but the ergonomics let it down.

A powerful and feature-packed notebook. But it can’t match the quality of Dell’s XPS M1710.

Some will prefer it to TI’s system, but a few quirks see it finishing in second place.

Seriously powerful mobile gaming grunt with all the bling, from Dell. Yep, Dell.

Luxurious extras and design make this a highly desirable machine. It’s ideal if space is at a premium at home.