It’s not cheap, but it’s powerful and cleverly constructed to make the most of the components.

A Blu-ray drive is just about the only justification for the Sony’s high price; it’s poor value overall.

It’s the most expensive laptop we’ve looked at yet. David Hollingworth ponders if you get the right amount of bang for your buck.

A Blu-ray drive is just about the only justification for the Sony’s high price; it’s poor value overall.

Custom design watercooling and some judicious overclocking make for a showstopping performance and 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.

A stunning way to enjoy HD DVD, but the wonderful design and features come at a price

The format wars continue as Blu Ray comes to a monster laptop at a monster price.

It might lack style and cutting edge technology, but this 19" monster packs in power and features.

World's Fastest Notebook.

Seriously powerful mobile gaming grunt with all the bling, from Dell. Yep, Dell.

Pioneer’s new DreamBook Power uses the Clevo D900K chassis which offers the size and space required to cool the blisteringly fast components contained within (see the specs box below).

Supreme quality and performance at a supreme price.

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

Any way you look at it, ITC’s Millennia 7350 is a monster.

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.

Very narrowly pipped for the top placing Labs winner award this month, Plus offers an impressive performing gaming machine with all the bells and whistles you'd expect to find at this price point. Wrapped in the attractive Cooler Master Cavalier wave housing, there's no ultra portability to be found here. The clear advantage of moving away from small form factor housing is not being starved for space internally.

When we sent out the call for multimedia systems we were expecting notebooks and PCs capable of DVD playback and some basic gaming. Pioneer not only cleared this bar with their submission - they raised it.

This tiny notebook, measuring a mere 26.5 x 22 x 2.1cm looks quite ordinary on the outside, yet comes with quite an interesting processor inside. The Valeo CP10 is not powered by Intel or AMD, nor even Transmeta, but instead has one of the first VIA Antaur CPUs we've come across.