We've traversed the acronym laden landscape of VoIP for you, and present you with the PC Authority guide to VoIP: what it is, what kinds of services you can find, what savings you can expect to make and how it is that you can go about setting up VoIP for yourself at home.

ATI gives the integrated graphics world a kick in the arse, John Gillooly feels the vibrations.

In what is an interesting first time foray into the crowded PDA market, Acer is hedging its bets by releasing both Palm- and Pocket PC-based PDAs. It's a curious gambit to be sure, and we're content to see which PDA branch blossoms while the other withers.

The Qosmio is the absolute pinnacle in multimedia notebooks. It brings everything you need for a good Windows XP Media Center Edition (MCE) system and squeezes it into a notebook form-factor. Albeit a large notebook form-factor. Yes the Qosmio is a huge and heavy notebook, but it's not nearly as heavy as it would have been if it was packed with desktop internals as many desknotes of this size usually are.

The new Nokia Communicator  unfortunately evokes early '90s mobile phones: it has a long body, small display and is not something you could slip into a pocket. Closed, the 9500 is monstrous, but when you open its sideways clamshell design the 9500 comes into its own.

One of the most striking things about Pioneer’s entry this month is the cosmetics: it’s 24hr karaoke bar meets street-racing BMW. And lots of blue LEDs! And these LED’s can get a little annoying – especially the super bright “headlight” LED’s. They shine directly ahead, and at desk height they beam straight into your eyes. There is also a large, illuminated ‘Xfinity’ etched into the front door of the case. Suffice to say this case won’t be to everyone’s taste. But otherwise, the rest of the externals are OK – the top mount houses two of the six total USB ports beneath a tidy flap, and a large power button with a good action.

Not a bad tome to have in the computer room, the PC Repair Bench Book, by R Glister, is geared more towards the beginner tinkerer than the hardcore techie, but it's chock full of good information. Much more descriptive than "Upgrading and repairing PCs" (March 2003, page 63) but without the depth straight away, the PC Repair Bench Book is broken into 10 major sections.

The HomePlug networking standard has been around in the States and other countries for a few years, and has proven a popular alternative to running CAT 5 cabling in your walls or for the (then) expensive cost of setting up a wireless network. HomePlug is wired networking for sure, but it uses an existing infrastructure in your office or domicile: your copper electricity power 'network' that feeds your TV, hair-dryer, fridge and any other electrical appliance the juice it needs to run. In short, HomePlug uses your house's electrical wiring.

There are always moments in life when you wish you had your camera to hand. The Labs team rounds up the latest pocket cameras.

Part 1 of our VoIP product and services roundup includes: MyNetFone, Broadbandphone, Skype, Firefly, BBP Global and Chat-Cord.

Almost a complementary tome to The Ignoble Prizes, How to dunk a donut is written by Len Fisher, a scientist who has often been approached by corporations to perform some truly bizarre studies.

As far as Tablet PCs go, the only indication that the Portege 3500 is one, and not a notebook, is the solid stainless steel and magnesium hinge centered under the display. This is the single point for rotating and flipping the screen over and down, and it locks into place with a satisfying 'snick'. It's a much better work-around than the hinge and locks used by the Acer TravelMate C100.

The ProV is a product similar in nature to the Canopus ADVC-100 (page 44), but where the ADVC-100 is used for transcoding video streams with an eye on digital video work, the ProV is used to bring versatility to your computer monitor, or breathe life into any spare monitors youve got laying around.

The JoyBook 8000 marks the first attempt by BenQ to enter what some might argue is a crowded notebook market. BenQ's stance on the JoyBook is different from other notebook manufacturers though, as it won't be selling the JoyBook as 'just another notebook', but will instead market it totally as a digital lifestyle product.

The Complete Digital Photography is an excellent and comprehensive book about all aspects of digital photography. The author makes a strong distinction early on however: this is a book about digital photographs taken with a digital camera, not film photos scanned to be manipulated. This is an important point, as the book goes into great depth about how to take photos under varying conditions and then manipulate them afterwards.

Marc Abraham's Ignobel Prizes is the latest book in a series that seeks to highlight some of the strangest scientific research papers to be published. From the founder of the esteemed Annals of Improbable Research (www.improbable.com), the Ignobel Prizes award scientists for some truly bizarre work, including the research into dunking biscuits (see How to Dunk a Donut).

While the epithet 'multimedia PC' used to be bandied about to over-hype any PC in the mid-'90's that was capable of playing music, rudimentary video, and games, the descriptive was overused so much on sub-par PCs that the impact of any real multimedia capabilities was diminished in the wash of pretenders.

Before we even delve into this projector's specs, the most important and standout metric with the EMP-S1 is its extremely humble $1,999 price tag, which when compared to the usual $5-10K standard for home cinema, puts the EMP-S1 well within reach of people for whom home video projection was merely a dream.

This little TFT managed to fight its way into the top 10 of every set of results returned from testing. Quite a feat against the mighty major brands it knocked off.

Acer is hedging its bets by releasing both Palm and Pocket PC-based PDAs