As DVD starts gaining ground on CD burning as the optical storage method of choice, 4.7GB DVD has some competition at the hands of the newer 8.5GB dual layer format.

After conducting our DVD burner labs last month and seeing the emergence of cheap high-speed single format drives such as the Labs winning Ricoh and BenQ models at a mere $299, it's hard to go back to the $499 price tag of the Iomega drive.

Very narrowly pipped for the top placing Labs winner award this month, Plus offers an impressive performing gaming machine with all the bells and whistles you'd expect to find at this price point. Wrapped in the attractive Cooler Master Cavalier wave housing, there's no ultra portability to be found here. The clear advantage of moving away from small form factor housing is not being starved for space internally.

It’s one of the facts of the gaming hobbyist’s life: cutting edge games require cutting edge hardware. It’s as set in stone as Moore’s Law (which is itself now 40 years old). Every 12 to 18 months you need to upgrade or get left behind. Our contenders this month make a very good case for starting with a clean slate, and none more so than this month’s winner, the Modtech Civic-64FX.

Housed in a fairly attractive albeit plain chassis, this machine comes shipped with performance where it counts as well as plenty of potential for the tweakers and serial upgraders. A Pentium 4 3.0GHz processor is impressive enough for a system with a price tag under $2,500, but to also include a DVD burner, TFT display, good quality 2.1 speaker set up and wireless keyboard and mouse combo is previously unheard of.

DVD burning has been around for some time now and became widely accepted for its superior storage capacity over its little brother the CD. While we see single layer formatted 4.7GB discs now getting into the 12-speed writing range, the real action is dual-layer burning.

Released already in the U.S. and due out here shortly, PowerQuest has announced Version 7 of its Drive Image software. Some significant changes have been made with the latest version including plenty of sensible features for offsite data storage and time and space saving.

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

Currently only available to OEMs, although it should be released later to the consumer market, Seagate’s Momentus hard drive upgrade kit is designed to boost the common bottleneck issue of hard drive performance in notebooks, tablet PCs, digital audio players and blade servers.

Released already in the U.S. and due out here shortly, PowerQuest has announced Version 7 of its Drive Image software.

The first PC Direct machine we've tested features an eye-catching black anodized case with custom stealth drive face plates on all drives and front USB and audio connectors. Easy access via the tool-less snap panels takes this case the extra mile.

Physically similar to the Scorpion Z-Box system with its black anodised midi tower, this unit also features a pair of both front-mounted audio 3.5mm sockets and USB ports, perfect for quick plug and play of both bus and externally powered devices such as keyboards, printers, joysticks and removable USB pen drives.

While 64-bit computing has been around for a while (for the two of you who could afford Intel's Itanium, and now Itanium II processors), the dream of 64-bittery for the humble home system has been a long time coming.

Designed with portability in mind, this notebook is slim, sexy and versatile, enabling basic office usage, DVD playback or even some weekend gaming.

Taking photos is only half the fun. Touching them up on your PC and printing them is the other half. PC Authority takes a look at some of the best photo-printers on the market.

This pre-production notebook was shipped to us in a professional looking silver lockable briefcase. We were expecting to see top secret government papers rather than a slimline ultra low voltage (ULV) notebook.

A basic barebones motherboard with a price to match, ASROCK's P4VT8 Pentium 4 motherboard may not be the most feature packed mobo around, but what it lacks in integrated components, it more than makes up for with its bargain basement price tag and practical applications.

We reviewed the MegaPC180's predecessor, the Mega651, in September last year (Issue 70, page 46) and were fairly impressed with the way this unit handled for a first generation crossover Hi-Fi/PC. The key to digital convergence is seamless integration and MSI has gone a few extra steps in the right direction to help with this changeover.

Locating the sweet spot in the market for well kitted out machines on a budget, Pioneer has come to the party by introducing it's Power PC model, featuring all the tech goodies without the sour aftertaste of a high price ticket. This black futuristic PC looks quite schmick with its front mounted LCD readout displaying up to date temperature information on the system, so you know exactly what's happening with your cooling.

Swiping the hardware from the PC Authority test bench, we went about putting together our Shuttle XPC. Immediately we were confronted by one of the idiosyncrasies of small form factor PCs: squeezing all the hardware in the tiny space inside.