How will you be computing in the next 12 months? PC Authority brings you 2005's big technology stories - before they happen.

In the mid-1990s a debate raged over whether we would eventually end up watching television on our computers, or whether television would take over from the PC. In 1995 a PC called the MyGeNie went on sale boasting that you could watch TV while you worked...

When Quicken decided to revamp its range and take on MYOB’s Premier products with its new look QuickBooks Pro, MYOB countered by stepping into Quickens traditional turf at the lower end of the price range.

Imagine having a 'Too Hard Basket' in your accounting software where you can file problems for your accountant to sort out. It is a good idea and one that has been incorporated into this new player in the accounting software market -- with a subtle change.

HP is better known for printers than it is for digital cameras but it has discovered a new talent that must be sending a shiver down the spine of more traditional camera makers such as Canon, Olympus and Nikon.

Sometimes people have good ideas but desperately need some advice on how to put them into action. This survivor's guide is a case in point.

Once you have bought your digital camera it is easy to spend several hundred more dollars on photo editing software, but unless you are going to use a lot of time creating digital master pieces there are better ways of spending your money.

Canon's new 600i series of digital video cameras doesn't offer any major changes to the 500i series, just a continuing improvement in quality and a few nice extras. The cameras still look the same and are just as easy to use, but the new top of the range 650i is about as good as you are going to get in its price range.

One of the great mysteries that confronts modern man is his inability to program a VCR, so you would have thought that it was incumbent on manufacturers to make programming a DVD recorder simpler. Unfortunately nobody told the author of the Philips DVDR890 instruction manual. It omits a vital step from the general instructions for programming the device to record a show in advance - it took three attempts to get the feature to work, and only after stumbling across the missing instructions in the section for using G-codes (though I wasn't planning to use G-codes).

If you are serious about converting paper documents to editable text then this is the way to go. A decade ago it would have cost close to $50,000 for a system that allowed you to rapidly scan multiple paper documents into editable, searchable and archivable electronic documents. Today it can be done for less than $1300 and the cost of a scanner with an automatic document feeder.

The booming interest in genealogy created by the Internet has provided a lucrative market for programs that help the home user research and create their family tree...

The 5250 is a compact unit that combines a good quality scanner with an average printer, efficient photocopy function and basic fax, all controlled from a simple to use software control centre.

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.