The Acer Aspire has a lot of handy multimedia functions that help it work as a desktop replacement/media unit. One of the Aspire’s main selling points is the Arcade feature, which is a Windows Media Centre clone. A button on the notebook fascia opens Arcade, bypassing the Windows OS and enabling all media player functions: DVD, MP3 etc. It works quite well but isn’t as graphically stunning as MCE.

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.

Sony typically asks a little more than their competitors for similar products, but this usually pays off in the quality of workmanship and the reliability associated with most Sony products. The Sony VAIO VGN-S28GP is an extremely well-built notebook and should provide rock-solid performance for years to come.

The Aspire is a very good unit with several features which enhance its usability. It will suit on-the-go entertainment and productivity, at a price that won't burn your wallet.

The Twinhead Efio is a mixed beast. It has some very good features, such as an all-magnesium casing and ATI Mobility 9700, but it also has some middling features, like a relatively slow 1.8GHz Intel processor and 4:3 screen. The unit is well made and well set out however.

The BenQ Joybook 7000 v07 is a multimedia PC with some MCE-like abilities. It comes loaded with QMedia Center - another MCE clone - and a PCMCIA-sized remote. QMedia operates much like MCE in that there is a main page – coloured BenQ purple of course - from which the usual Pictures and Videos icons enable navigation of the user’s media files.

Finding a good PC or notebook for the family is not as hard as you might think. PC Authority  puts the latest models to the test.

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.

The IBM ThinkCentre S50 Ultra Small is the world's smallest 'full-function' desktop computer according to manufacturer IBM. Whether it's the world's smallest or not, it's certainly one of the smallest we've seen.

The ASUS is one tough little cookie. Its cover and palmrest are encased in brushed aluminium lending the unit a reassuring sense of rigidity and roadworthiness. The 15.4" screen is bright, and its default resolution of 1680x1050 makes text sharp but a little small to read unless up close. The unit also comes with a built in TV-tuner, and also sports a TV-antenna output.

When it comes to accessories, the Aspire has one of the best bundles supplied for this roundup: including an MCE remote and a radio/TV antenna! It also has a decent specification list: 3Ghz Pentium 4; 160GB HDD; and 512MB RAM. The only sticking point here, amongst all this multimedia goodness, is the inclusion of the Mobility X300 video card. It's like building a Ferrari and installing a two-stroke motor. It doesn't make much sense.

Will home media centres do to the entertainment industry what video did to the radio star? With new technology reshaping our lounges, homes could soon become fully functional media hubs.

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.

The Shuttle XPC is an icon of SFF design, and there are as many iterations as there are chipsets.

The $1000 PC was once regarded as the Holy Grail of computing, but now almost every manufacturer has one.

Producing a PC for under a thousand dollars will inevitably lead to compromises – do you go for a better screen or more processing power?

The Acer Aspire SA20 is a machine built on a budget and it performs accordingly.

Shuttle's SB95P is a small form factor (SFF) aimed at the enthusiast/gamer market, and it takes advantage of the i925 iteration of PCI-E. Though Shuttle are known for their XPC’s striking looks, in this case the colour scheme is nothing to write home about: is gun-metal anyone's favourite colour?

This is one nice looking white plastic and aluminium barebones system, with smooth lines and compact minimalism. Being a SFF PC makes ventilation vital, and the Kloss is built from the new BTX standard, which was designed with thermal effectiveness in mind.

FIC's Condor has answered the call this month, offering gamers an easy to upgrade system, wrapped up in a one of the most innovative cases we've seen.