Part laptop and part nettop, the Gigabyte Booktop M1022M is the first netbook we’ve seen that overcomes the ‘3 USB problem'.

Neither cheap nor beautiful, MSI’s Atom powered nettop is sadly second among equals.

A very likeable all-in-one – albeit limited in its usefulness beyond basic functions. Read our review of Shuttle's new all-in-one X50

Looks, features, value: this is the first nettop we’ve seen to genuinely appeal in all the key areas

A retrograde step from its predecessor, but a super low price makes this dinky PC very desirable

Not very competitive on price, but there’s plenty of scope for performance

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?

Like clowns piling out of the other kind of Mini, you’ll be similarly surprised at how much Apple has managed to squeeze into the Mac mini.

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.

In the ever bloating world of mini barebones PCs there is a wide range of build quality and internal design to be witnessed. AOpen has been in the market for a while now, and the XC cube edition is one of the better designed systems in an area where quality can vary wildly from brand to brand.

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.

Synonymous with the barebones market, Shuttle has carved a niche by providing enthusiasts exactly what they crave, but in mini form factored systems.

Our Labs Winner this month represents what a mini barebones PC should be: it's small yet easily accessible; it's attractive, but has a quality build; and it has all the features you need for a full PC or a media centre.

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.

One of only a handful of non-Intel chipsets we received, AOpen's XCube EZ18 features an NVIDIA nForce2 chipset with support for 266 and 333MHz AMD processors.