We reviewed the MegaPC180's predecessor, the Mega651, in September last year (Issue 70, page 46) and were fairly impressed with the way this unit handled for a first generation crossover Hi-Fi/PC. The key to digital convergence is seamless integration and MSI has gone a few extra steps in the right direction to help with this changeover.

When we ran four tablet PCs in December 2002 (Issue 61, page 36) we got plenty of response from readers looking to find out more about them. Over a year on now and tablets have increased dramatically in spec and design although pricing hasn’t reduced as much as we’d expected - possibly since they still haven’t made mass market appeal and sales.

The Civic Diamond 2015.xT is more than a little similar to Digital Star's PowerNote CL56 (reviewed November 2004, page 43), featuring the same OEM housing. Designed to take care of any application you can throw at it, it's a capable book that will handle DirectX 8 and 9 games, as well as churn through productivity apps.

If, like us, you’ve ever had the deep pining associated with wanting to build a robot or two, this book is definitely for you. This 360-page guide to everything you’ve ever wanted to know about robots covers how they work and how to build your own. You’ll learn how to select the right power source, use the tools you’ll need and how to build a robot from things you have around the house or from kit form.

Marketed clearly towards the gamer and entertainment user, this unit is not that different the CMV CT-722A (October 2003, page 59) both with a single D-Sub input and a excellent 16 millisecond pixel response time.

On receiving this unit, we were impressed by the mammoth 15.4in widescreen display. Although sceptical of its ability to perform given its monster display size, we were proven wrong at every turn, with the 8600 performing similarly to the more expensive Toshiba Tecra S1 Notebook (July 2003 page 40). Absolutely bursting at the gills with features, this Notebook boasts an array of connectivity options including side mounted FireWire and IrDA, while on the rear of the unit we find two USB and legacy serial, parallel and S-Video ports.

Your PC is only as good as your last upgrade, and this is truer than ever with current gaming and software applications milking machines for everything they're worth.

Shuttle's push on the small form factor market has seen the PC finally migrate from the bedroom to become an integral part of the lounge room and entertainment set up. Capable of a number of varied roles, these include file servers, HDTV receiving boxes and media streaming machines.

Although the mobile marketplace has been changing in the face of Centrino and the slow but gradual tablet PC adoption rate, large form factored (greater than single spindle) notebooks are still the order of the day.

Widescreen is still one of the flavours of the month for notebooks and plenty of users are opting to banish boring old 4:3 aspect ratio LCD panels to the land of wind and ghosts.

With the slow Australian take-off of the Centrino platform, higher spec, slightly larger form factored units are making their way into the marketplace. Intel's Pentium-M processors are ramping up in speed, now available in 1.7GHz values and still impressing.

If your PC is less of a speed demon and more of a dinosaur then it's time to upgrade your CPU. We put the latest low, mid and high end processors to the test.

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.

Slightly less sturdy than previous Dell models we have seen, the D500 is finished in attractive silver bezel housing, the keyboard is comfortable to use and offers all the functionality of standard-sized desktop keyboards.

A fantastic specification notebook with all the trimmings you'd expect to find on more expensive notebooks, the Joybook 8100-V13 has a 15.4in widescreen WXGA with native 1280 x 800 resolution. With ATI's Mobility RADEON 9600 graphics, boasting 64MB dedicated video memory, it's great for DVD playback or gaming -- the unit returned 9,502 marks under 3DMark01SE Pro, more than enough to provide comfortable gameplay with a decent number of fps even in recent games. BenQ has gone as far as to include not just a DVD-ROM for DVD movie playback, but an optical DVD writer, capable of 2-speed DVD+R media writing, ideal for both business archiving or for personal backup.

Locating the sweet spot in the market for well kitted out machines on a budget, Pioneer has come to the party by introducing it's Power PC model, featuring all the tech goodies without the sour aftertaste of a high price ticket. This black futuristic PC looks quite schmick with its front mounted LCD readout displaying up to date temperature information on the system, so you know exactly what's happening with your cooling.

Any serious gamer knows that their reputation is everything; they also know the best hardware often gives the playing performance required to stay at the top. The Digicor gaming keyboard features all the gaming functions you'll need to play at your peak.

Swiping the hardware from the PC Authority test bench, we went about putting together our Shuttle XPC. Immediately we were confronted by one of the idiosyncrasies of small form factor PCs: squeezing all the hardware in the tiny space inside.

Intel’s push on Centrino notebook branding has only made it so far in the six months since its introduction. So far prices have been high for Centrino notebooks, although Emagen looks set to change this mindset, now offering the N1000 model as a cost-effective alternative option to top of the line name brand notebooks with all the bells and whistles.

Despite not being the smallest or lightest notebook, this veritable speed demon packs a 3.06GHz desktop Pentium 4 processor and is matched with an ATI Mobility 9000 graphics adaptor and quarter gig of PC2100 DDR RAM. Another notebook to dispose of legacy parallel, PS/2 and serial ports, it boasts a pair of rear mounted USB ports, S-Video output and FireWire connectivity. Also included are 10/100 Ethernet, a 56K modem and single PCMCIA slot for card expansion.