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.

With the slow Australian take-off of the Centrino platform, higher spec, slightly larger form factored units are making their way into the marketplace. Intel's Pentium-M processors are ramping up in speed, now available in 1.7GHz values and still impressing.

Want to skip the Christmas crowds, or nab a once in a lifetime bargain? Online shopping could be the answer. Tim Dean looks at the glory and the pitfalls.

A beautifully tiny computer-on-a-board that you should only consider if you have a specific use in mind

A very-well designed alternative to big beefy computers which make a lot of noise.

David Fearon introduces 3D models and rendering

Combined French/English grammar correction.

We know you want to play games, so we've put 18 PCI Express graphics cards under the microscope to see who really does the job the best.

Climb the steps all the way to Windows guru status with our invaluable selection of tips and shortcuts for XP and Vista.

Hugely powerful for such a reasonable price, it’s far more appealing than a GTX or an Ultra

Not very competitive on price, but there’s plenty of scope for performance

New hardware and remote management tools target mid-sized firms.

IBM to build chips for world's largest radio telescope.

One of only a handful of non-Intel chipsets we received, AOpen's XCube EZ18 features an NVIDIA nForce2 chipset with support for 266 and 333MHz AMD processors.

Intel will bump a Celeron M processor and several other small-package Core 2 Duo CPUs to new steppings in a move aimed at improving speeds.

A simple board that struggles to justify its price

Sounds of grinding teeth from Cupertino.

Green the theme for new boxes.

Surround-sound support and mastering-quality plug-ins mean Sound Forge is better than ever.