Media Center is here but Tim Dean thinks it totally and utterly doesn't live up to expectations, but there might be some hope for the future.

Still not sure whether it's worth upgrading to Vista? We put XP and Vista through the ultimate face-off.

Add a TV tuner and you can make the most of Media Center, which is bundled with Vista Home Premium and Ultimate.

What will you be buying, using and drooling over this year? Tim Dean looks at the astounding products and technologies due to hit in the next 12 months.

We provide the commentary on a bruising eight-round battle between Vista and Tiger.

It's a close race between this draft-n Vista Media Extender and the Xbox 360 for getting HD video to your TV. If you watch video from your Vista PC, read on.

Tim Dean thinks we need to look to notebook technology to save the day

A Media Center Extender, upscaling DVD player and great games console

MSI's MegaBook L61OI lives up to its 'mega' moniker with a large 15.4-inch widescreen TFT, desktop CPU, excellent graphics and pumping audio. The model we looked at was a pre-production prototype notebook and as such was a little shaky and did not come with all the inclusions a final model will have. As a proof of concept, however, the notebook is quite good.

Altech's Maestro Pro is a Home Theatre PC based on Microsoft's Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005.

Microsoft has started from scratch with Vista’s networking features — but are they any better than those found in XP? We log-in and find out.

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.

SesamTV Media Center is an all-in-one multimedia software designed to be viewed on a TV set (nice T...

Play your video, photo and music files on your TV from a networked PC. We put five network players to the test

Flexible, beautifully designed and reasonably priced. An excellent attempt to attract the masses.

We help you determine whether your current PC can run Vista and which version of the operating system best suits your needs.

A Media Center PC and 32in LCD TV all-in-one.

Vista’s Network and Sharing Center brings networking, file sharing and discovery options together, making it far easier to diagnose problems.

Vendor to support XP Home and Media Center Edition for an extra five years.

A very tidy solution for streaming your downloaded video to the TV, without the need for a full Media Center PC.