The design is impeccable, the build superb and the screen extraordinary, but the price is a huge barrier. We ponder the icon that is the Macbook Pro 17in

A beautifully designed, powerful system that almost no-one will be able to justify buying. If your IT department can find the budget to put a new Mac Pro on your desktop, you're lucky indeed

A great desktop replacement thanks to the huge screen and dual 200GB hard disks, but its price is too high.

A stylish all-in-one media centre that effortlessly handles all tasks thrown at it. But it’s disgracefully priced.

If we were looking for some of the highest benchmark scores we could attain than we'd highly commend this machine

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.

A great desktop replacement thanks to the huge screen and dual 200GB hard disks, but its price is too high.

A decent multimedia notebook, but it’s not exciting enough for the price.

Very fast, but the top-end components offer poor value in the face of competition.

Not perfect, but the best all-rounder.

The branding reflects the exclusivity, but not necessarily the capability.

The dual-core version of AMD's premium FX-series enters the game, and nothing can stand in its way.

Apple’s 17-inch PowerBook G4 is a thing of beauty, shaming the other 17- inch notebooks with its size, weight and design – perhaps with the exception of the ASUS.

The Pioneer DreamBook Power 900 is a locally built monster – this isn’t a desktop replacement, it’s a desk.

As far as performance is concerned, the Emagen Lightspeed XPS is a fairly competitive offering. It sits in the middle of the pack as far as price is concerned, but managed to sit at second to third place in most benchmarks - it even came top of the class in 3DMark05. The 3.6Ghz Pentium 4 certainly helped there. And the fact that it’s $600 cheaper than the Pioneer system also works in its favour.

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 first Dothan notebook to roll off the rank, we were interested to see exactly how much real-world gain Intel is offering in its revised Centrino platform.

Wrapped in an attractive silver chassis, this sexy looking notebook is easy on the eye, and features all of the latest gadgets. The left-hand side of the machine features the usual legacy parallel and DB9 monitor out for use with an external monitor, although both are hidden beneath a rubber cover so as not to ruin the smooth clean lines of this housing.

When we ran four tablet PCs in December 2002 (Issue 61, page 36) we got plenty of response from readers looking to find out more about them. Over a year on now and tablets have increased dramatically in spec and design although pricing hasn’t reduced as much as we’d expected - possibly since they still haven’t made mass market appeal and sales.

Acer’s tiny new Tablet PC, the TravelMate C111 marries the functionality of their previous convertible tablet with the low-power high-performance functionality of the Intel Centrino.