It's a sign of the times when Compaq's Aero 8000 runs Windows CE in a box bigger than a Sharp PC-A250 (reviewed issue 23, p86) running Windows 98. So what's the big idea? Windows CE uses no moving parts, while software in ROM means immediate start-up times, high reliability, and long battery life all highly desirable qualities in a portable.

Why are we reviewing something that is a mere 36GB? Simple -- because this one drops access times and pumps up the transfer rate. Not targeted at the home user, the 36GB WD Raptor is marketed as an enterprise-level SATA drive -- the fastest drive on offer by WD. Capacity becomes an afterthought for the Raptor with its 10,000rpm spindle concerning itself with speed, resulting in seek times of around 5.2ms, compared to the 8.9ms of a 7,200rpm drive.

We love hardware. As users ourselves we feel your pangs of wanting the newest, fastest rig and components. Unfortunately it's hard to justify the cost of bleeding-edge hardware at the best of times - more so with the cost of single graphics cards at times exceeding the $1000 price barrier. This is as much as some users would spend on a total system upgrade.

ViewSonic's VX924 panel has one of the lowest quoted response time yet, at 4ms.

An intelligent defragmentation utility that can help to maintain server efficiency.

One of only two DVD burners this month to come with a two year manufacturer warranty, the BenQ DW400A offers peace of mind should things go pear shaped.

Pixel response times on an LCD – or the time it takes for a pixel to change from one colour to another – keep on dropping, and now we present you with the fastest unit to hit the market yet: the ViewSonic VX924 which is capable of refreshing at 4ms.

Once upon a time not too long ago, your average inkjet printer had a single tricolour ink cartridge. Of course, the print quality was fairly ordinary, but it did the job. Today, with digital cameras the norm and home users wanting to print their own photographs, your photo printer may have as many as eight different ink cartridges.

A suite with some nice features but slow startup times made us disappointed with ZoneAlarm Internet Security Suite 2009

We’ve all been warned a million times since the dawn of computing – but we’ll knock it into your head once more for posterity: save often.

There’s only so many times I can herald the coming switch from analog TV broadcasts to digital, so I’ll just dig straight into this impressive digital television card.

Prices have come down in recent times and there is no better example than the Sony TRV 355E. Compromising on size and portability, but not on video quality or features. Despite its size, it's still lighter than many VHS cameras but has more features and equals most for image quality.

While the storage community eagerly awaits Serial ATA disks (see page 39), the latest generations of Ultra ATA disks have emerged, boasting huge capacities and searing performance.

With a hefty 8Mb of storage - four times that of the Palm V and Palm IIIe, it,s doubtful that you,ll ever have to worry about running out of space for applications and data.

This PCMCIA card was fairly average in all tests, returning some uninspiring times and a middling tenacity to stick to its signal.

A good concept, but the on-demand anti-virus scanner lacks real-time email and IM protection.

An above average overall finisher, the Targa's claim to fame is undoubtedly its long battery run times, achieving the best part of 5 hours on a single charge whilst juggling a full productivity workload of Photoshop and Microsoft Office.

For those users after goliath capacity drives with fast seek and access times, there's the Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 Plus.

The Mozo brand is new to Australia, and we were keen to see what it had to offer. At times its PV776 TFT excited, then disappointed. It’s quite feature-barren, with only an RGB D-Sub input and fairly standard specifications so if you’re after the quality of DVI you’d have to move on.

Panasonic has gone above and beyond, releasing its NV-GS35 with its massive 30x optical zoom, dwarfing the usual 20 or so times zooms found on other cameras.