Our pick of the low-cost office suites has had a much-needed overhaul, and now battles Microsoft in terms of features, not just price.

When Macromedia released the first Dreamweaver almost three years ago it was welcomed with open arms by professional Web developers.

The HardKey/EG Pro is a combination of USB dongle and software together encrypting files or systems keeping your data safe from prying eyes.

Photoshop moves beyond photo editing to conquer completely new territory.

Eighteen months after the release of Panther, Apple's Mac OS X 10.4, codenamed Tiger, is finally here, and it has been well worth the wait.

With advanced packages such as the latest Photoshop (to be reviewed next month) Adobe is the leading software developer when it comes to traditional graphic design...

Right from the first moment you open Adobe GoLive!, it becomes obvious that this is not your standard Web page layout tool.

More tools and good support options are just some of the highlights of this server package.

Affordable, yet punches above its price for quality and features. Ideal for a quiet PC.

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.

Red Hat's latest offering is a finely tuned offensive into the lucrative corporate desktop market. With the Linux steamroller on a collision course for Redmond the last year has seen a number of major wins for the open source upstart with corporations such as IBM and governments that include Germany, France, China, Japan, Russia and Britain either already making the switch or considering it. And not just for servers, but on workstations too.

Vector graphics

Useful new features and a total interface overhaul make this the best Office ever.

It's a little ironic that every new version of Mac OS comes closer to Windows when you consider that Microsoft was originally accused of hijacking Apple's interface. Apple claims to have put 150 new features into Panther, but the two it highlights first are improvements to Finder and the new Exposé[alt+0233 in courier new]. The improvements to Finder bring it one step closer to the Windows menu system, which since 95 has been superior to Apple's. The new one click-reveals-all Finder was sorely needed and makes Panther much easier to navigate than its predecessors.

It has been over two years since we previewed Office XP, but Microsoft has finally given us a glimpse of Office 2003. The finished version should be on the shelves by the end of July, but will it be worth the upgrade? The answer could be an emphatic 'yes' if you're a Tablet PC user, as Microsoft has just launched OneNote (see page 59), making full use of electronic ink. The company is also introducing InfoPath (see page 59) for designing electronic forms, with the flexibility of XML. The classic apps have also had their seen refurbishment, with Outlook (page 56) getting the most attention, and FrontPage and Publisher (page 58) a bit of a revamp.

Sophos Anti-Virus is clearly aimed at the enterprise market, with the minimum purchase being a 10-user licence, renewable annually. Unlike some of the other packages, Sophos is available for most operating systems including Unix, Open VMS, NetWare and Macintosh.

A new focus on animation, better video support and deeper integration, but not the core authoring package it once was.

New realism for bristled brushes and automatic painting that approaches manual quality give Painter X an edge.

This is the kind of phone that makes its owners roll off features and praise at you. It’s not perfect though.

Mid-range priced but fully featured, Panasonic's EB-VS3 is our new favourite chatbrick.