Blizzard Entertainment has sewn up a huge potion of the strategy market with its Warcraft series, and the keenly awaited World of Warcraft looks set to carve out a nice piece of the MMORPG scene for fans of the franchise.

Non-destructive image processing and creative filters feature in this comprehensive upgrade to the market leader.

More GTA sandbox action, set down south of the border. That means Cuba, not Victoria.

Sophos Anti-Virus is clearly aimed at the enterprise market, with the minimum purchase being a 10-user licence, renewable annually. Unlike some of the other packages, Sophos is available for most operating systems including Unix, Open VMS, NetWare and Macintosh.

Microsoft prepares to march into Adobe territory with its forthcoming suite of graphics and web development software.

Creative has enjoyed a long reign as the driving force in consumer-grade PC audio for the better part of a decade.

Director 8 Shockwave Studio is now the platform of choice for those sites determined to provide the richest possible Web experience

The Quadro FX3000 is based on the same NV35 core that powers the latest GeForce FX 5900 cards, but with a few new additions to cater to the professional market. Compared to the older Quadro FX2000, which was based on the NV30, or GeForce FX5800, the FX3000 has double the memory, at 256MB, as well as a 256-bit memory interface, giving double the theoretical graphics bandwidth, hitting just over 27GB/s. It also supports other features from the NV35, including a 128-bit floating-point precision graphics pipeline, 128-bit colour, 12-bit sub-pixel accuracy, 16x full-scene anti-aliasing, 3D volumetric textures, and of course support for all the latest OpenGL, DirectX and NVIDIA’s own Cg graphics language versions.

Linux is slowly becoming an acceptable choice as a mainstream desktop operating system but some users do not like the applications which are part of the system. The hunt has thus been on to find the best way of running Windows applications from within Linux.

The emphasis is placed on careful investigation of each environment and the wise selection of appropriate weapons and tools.

A new interface, smart albums, guided editing and photo merging keep Photoshop Elements ahead of the pack

Piranesi gets the major overhaul of interface and tools that its extraordinary creative power deserves

Piranesi gets the major overhaul of interface and tools that its extraordinary creative power deserves

Sacred first graced the pages of PC Authority just nine months ago, at which time we rated it as a solid RPG experience that would hold its own in a tough environment. Re-released with the Plus upgrade (also available via download), Sacred Plus improves a strong title and implements many of the suggestions made by the game's loyal online community.

This isn't the first time we've looked at the tiny Esky-esque PictureMate from Epson and at the time as a standalone product it garnered a Recommended award. It's good to see it do the same in a comparative environment, walking off with a second recommendation from the Labs team.

The iSTAR ID-17VSSBK is bright, sharp and clear and is housed in an attractive two tone glossy black and silver bezel which would match both the minimalist home or work environment.

The Techmart SOHO is the only system in this roundup to be supplied with a copy of Windows XP Home rather than XP Professional. This highlights Intermedia's emphasis on the small office, home office environment with this system, where the additional networking features of XP Pro aren't necessary. Even so, it does mean you'll be restricted to using a peer-to-peer network, and you'll need an upgrade if you ever want to set up a client-server system. For the extra $90, it might be worth future-proofing and upgrading to Pro.

We found the 802.11b/g Veritech VAC-2511-21 a robust performer, holding onto the connection even at an extended distance in an office environment.

With the release of version 4.1, Windows users finally get a look at Apple's iTunes software on home ground. From the brushed aluminium and ice blue of the Mac OS branding, to the organisation of the interface, it feels almost alien in a Windows environment.

Written for fledgling test project managers, the book starts by defining the foundations of a test system and discusses the FMEA (failure mode and effective analysis) approach for defining quality risks