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

Expensive, but the features are packed in. Just note the lack of Wi-Fi and some strong iPaq competition.

A high end DVD-based camcorder for quick and clean shooting.

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.

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.

Flawless. Behold, the crème de la crème by Dell.

If were to believe the hyperbole, this technology will do for digital technology what the invention of the parachute did for skydiving.

Narrowly missing out on an award, this machine deserves a special mention for its execution and incredible value for money rating.

'Absolute consistency' are the words we'd use to describe the performance of the Aspire T310. A solid all-rounder, this machine is just as at home gaming as it is doing 2D tasks, such as productivity applications, anti-virus scanning or media decoding. And, as shown by its impressive 4,271 PCMark04 score, it's not short on horsepower.