An old PC is like putty in your hands. Tim Dean looks at how you can shape it into a new system with a few easy upgrades.

In a world filled with gorgeous Sony, Apple and even Dell laptops, a sober, matte black machine aimed at consumers has to be truly special to turn heads. The IdeaPad Y430 is a well-built Centrino 2 machine that lacks nothing in the way of features, speed or value

High definition video is the next big thing for Australia. We explain the essential technologies for your TV or living room PC, and what to expect from our broadcasters.

One of the mantras of business computing is reliability. It all ties into TCO (total cost of ownership) - if a mission critical PC suffers a hardware failure, the resulting downtime can cost you a lot more than the price of an entire new system. As such, we in the PC Authority Labs always place a high emphasis on a good on-site warranty, such as that provided by a few manufacturers this month, including Pluscorp with its INTEQ V26.

A decent PC with media abilities bolted on, transforming this into a good lounge machine.

A wireless music player that performs audio magic through its LCD enabled remote control. It’s easy to use, quick to setup but lacks video functionality. But we still really liked it.

Bill Gates claims the future of computing lies with the PC, but Davey Winder says future devices must combine form with functionality. TThere can be little doubt that the PC has come a lo

Nominating Sato as our winner for the desktop machines this month was fairly straightforward, especially when compared to deciding the outcome of the closely-fought notebook war. Because, even though the Sato was outdone by one or two systems in terms of performance, nothing beat it on pure value for money.

There are now literally dozens of MP3 players on the market. However, the arrival of MPZoos MP3 Disc Player brings a slight change in direction

The Hi-Grade Xperian can simply be described as a bundle of essential technology ingeniously put together in one desirable package.

An impressive paperback replacement with a remarkable display: it’s only let down by the unintuitive software.

The notebook winner this month was a close call. Two units stood out as being at the top of the multimedia field: the Pioneer D47K and the Acer Aspire 1802WSM. Feature-by-feature they were very closely matched, but we chose the Pioneer for several reasons, one of which was its advanced media capabilities.

A fine combination of remote management, all-round fault tolerance and top build quality

The quality of this diminutive cutie is almost as good as the high-end models, but the price means a compromise on both speed and features.

TI's current workstation-class 3D graphics accelerators - dubbed X1 - are the company's latest effort to keep a hand in the high-end 3D graphics market. Consumer-level 3D hardware is now massively powerful, of course, but for all-out 3D performance and rock-solid driver integration you need a card dedicated to the purpose, and ATI claims the X1-128 is it.

Choosing between a standard compact camera and a DSRL may be the biggest photography decision you have to make. We list a number of compelling reasons to sway you either way.

CeBIT Australia 2007 is the biggest, most impressive show in years. PC Authority brings you a ringside seat from the IT industry's event of the moment.

Camcorder, still camera and portable media player all in one sleek package.

It certainly isn’t pretty, but with results like these for such a low price the MP180 is hard to ignore