A rough, tough laptop with serious attitude, but its keyboard proves an Achilles heel.

InFocus had to raise the bar, and it has – superbly. A desirable piece of projection tech that fully justifies the outlay.

Apart form your credit card's cries of anxiety, you'll love the flexibility and performance of this TV

Older screen, but in its day a super screen at a super price, though it's large

A true pro camera that slots in nicely between the flagship Canons

Amazing images and great fun, but this quirky cam is way too pricey for most

Forget gold plated and diamond encrusted – if you've got three grand to spare and don't mind weighty snappers, this is the camera to blow it on

An older screen that was one of the best we'd seen, but with a price premium that was too much for us – haggle hard

A versatile single-socket rack server with a wide range of processor choices, plus a good warranty for the price.

Not great value for money, but the XPS 700 offers plenty of power and striking looks.

Luxurious extras and design make this a highly desirable machine. It’s ideal if space is at a premium at home.

Our poor receptionist didn’t quite know what to do when Altech’s monolithic machine turned up. She had a point.

It’s one of the facts of the gaming hobbyist’s life: cutting edge games require cutting edge hardware. It’s as set in stone as Moore’s Law (which is itself now 40 years old). Every 12 to 18 months you need to upgrade or get left behind. Our contenders this month make a very good case for starting with a clean slate, and none more so than this month’s winner, the Modtech Civic-64FX.

The world's most popular professional 3D animation package, 3ds max by discreet, just got an upgrade. Rather than being a major overhaul, this seems an effort to bridge gaps between 3ds max and some of the industry's leading 3d applications in several areas. However, 3ds max6 is not just upward expansion reaching higher in 3D visual effects, it is also broadening to encompass a wider scope of different industry disciplines.

Sony's first Cineza, the VPLHS1, was an innovative projector: it featured 'sideshot', horizontal as well as vertical keystone correction which meant it was the first projector that could be placed in the corner of a room, and still project a perfectly rectangular image in the centre of a wall.

ACER TravelMate 630

MACROMEDIA E-LEARNING STUDIO

From the rarefied heights of Dells Inspiron 8100 (reviewed October 2001, page 71) we take a step back with the Toshiba Tecra 9000. Like the Inspiron 8100 the Tecra is a Pentium III-M CPU, from the Tualatin family of processors, although this is the 933MHz version.

Almost five years have past now since the first release of 3ds max, then called the full 3D Studio MAX. One of the first packages of its kind to introduce affordability and performance to an industry dominated by huge price tags. And even after its competitors have been forced to compromise their price to compete, max has kept up its innovative features and held its ground.

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