Our pick of the low-cost office suites has had a much-needed overhaul, and now battles Microsoft in terms of features, not just price.

For a company whose only other major release was the original Half Life, Valve has pushed the boundaries with fresh, bold gameplay that stays true to the legendary legacy.

Powerful, well price and a worthy addition to the A-List. The PacStar Core i7 is a PC we wouldn't be unhappy to take home and spend the weekend gaming on

A stylish and rugged business-class smartphone with a huge choice of push-email clients available.

A mighty dual-GPU board that makes light work of even today’s toughest DirectX 10 games.

A mighty dual-GPU board that makes light work of even today’s toughest DirectX 10 games

A worthy update to the most underrated of the Office applications — OneNote is now a must-have.

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.

Smart, clever and capable. A couple of imperfections keep it off the top spot, and we might be tempted by the camera-less S70, but it's a fine choice

Fantastic looks and comprehensive features Lightroom is a winner for improving workflow efficiency.

Another minor revision, but the addition of privacy functions further extends its impressively wide focus

More expensive than its direct competition, but thanks to its brilliant features the D80 is money well spent.

Improved interface, object and layer handling, plus integrated 3D painting add greatly to power, usability and value

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.

Beautifully engineered and constructed, the Mac Pro is also the fastest PC we’ve ever seen by some margin.

Small enough to fit in your pocket but with enough power to make light work of rusty screws and flat-packed furniture

Its longlife 24-hour battery makes it significantly less portable, but this laptop is classy in every sense of the word.

The TViX is a fairly small box, roughly about the same size as a good DVD box-set, but inside it's got some amazing smarts. This also technically isn't a media streamer as such - it's more a media cacher thanks to the 80GB hard drive inside.

Dare we say the near-perfect strategy game? A royal treat for history addicts.

Over 60 new tracks plus more to download means our love affair with Guitar Hero continues. It’s only rock ‘n’ roll but we like it – a lot