A great choice for offices that need to recognise batches of documents, with its only real weakness being poor automatic zoning on complex documents.

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

The Quadro FX3000 is based on the same NV35 core that powers the latest GeForce FX 5900 cards, but with a few new additions to cater to the professional market. Compared to the older Quadro FX2000, which was based on the NV30, or GeForce FX5800, the FX3000 has double the memory, at 256MB, as well as a 256-bit memory interface, giving double the theoretical graphics bandwidth, hitting just over 27GB/s. It also supports other features from the NV35, including a 128-bit floating-point precision graphics pipeline, 128-bit colour, 12-bit sub-pixel accuracy, 16x full-scene anti-aliasing, 3D volumetric textures, and of course support for all the latest OpenGL, DirectX and NVIDIA’s own Cg graphics language versions.

A new interface, drawing engine and programming language, but surprisingly little new power.

What makes PDF (Portable Document Format) unique is that it can provide an exact electronic replica of any document from any application on all major platforms, including all text, graphics and fonts. It’s an amazingly flexible format with a myriad of uses ranging from electronic manuals and e-books, through secure document exchange and archiving, to multimedia presentation and high-end commercial print.

Its over a year since IBM released its major update to its ViaVoice family of speech dictation packages. At its core, ViaVoice has always been impressive.

If you need professional-class ruggedness on a budget, this is a real option.

Adobe has been riding high on the success of the portable document format (PDF), and the Acrobat creation tools needed to generate them. Later in the year version 6.0 will be launched, but in the meantime we have a preview of Acrobat Professional 6.0 Beta.

The Epson Perfection 3200 Photo represents absolute quality scanning for the serious amateur or professional user. It uses a matrix CCD and micro lens to produce an amazing 3,200dpi optical resolution. Even though it wasn't the highest optical resolution scanner this month, standing behind both the Microtek 4,800dpi scanners, it still produced stunning results without long scanning times, care of USB 2.0 and FireWire.

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

It may be costly, but if you need accurate OCR for mass document digitisation, this package fits the bill admirably.

Powerful new versions of InDesign, Photoshop and Illustrator, and now Acrobat 8 Professional too.

A questionable interface redesign and greater-than-ever complexity lead to a half-baked feeling.

Despite the fact it's aimed at professional users - corporate and event videographers and advanced home-video enthusiasts are the target market - Ulead DVD Workshop 2 retains many of the ease-of-use features for which the company has become known.

Not only is SuSE Linux Professional 8.1 the most complete distribution, it's also one of the friendliest.

3Dlabs has a strong reputation amongst the professional graphics community for producing high performance and high quality chipsets and graphics cards. The Oxygen range spans the low to high-end of the professional OpenGL market, with the GVX1 falling in the middle of this range.

A cheap and cheerful approach to Flash but the sheer power it offers is exceptional, as is the price.

Daikin may be more familiar to some as the producer of Scenarist, a high-end professional package which has been used in the authoring of many major blockbusters.

Forget budget DSLR, this is for serious photography. Extravagant in almost every way, the D700 is superbly responsive and produces stunning images

With Web Standard/Premium, Design Premium AND Macromedia’s products now absorbed into CS3, choosing the right suite is EASY.