There's no denying the appeal of broadband internet access and yet for a smart country Australia has been falling way behind our international counterparts.

The Mega 2801 has one of the coolest features seen on a HTPC: it lets you play CDs (but not DVDs) without the computer turned on. It has two red buttons on the fascia that let you choose between CD or PC.

Designed in Melbourne, the Century CD can store up to 100 discs but instead of using the shelf-like arrangement of the Fortuna (reviewed March 2002, page 90), the Century CD sports a turntable arrangement reminiscent of old carousel slide projectors.

ATI gives the integrated graphics world a kick in the arse, John Gillooly feels the vibrations.

The Qosmio is the absolute pinnacle in multimedia notebooks. It brings everything you need for a good Windows XP Media Center Edition (MCE) system and squeezes it into a notebook form-factor. Albeit a large notebook form-factor. Yes the Qosmio is a huge and heavy notebook, but it's not nearly as heavy as it would have been if it was packed with desktop internals as many desknotes of this size usually are.

The Lexmark P6250 is a not just a photo printer as such, it's also an all in one multifunction device: printer/scanner/copier and media reader. You might be nodding to yourself with the obviousness of an all in one printer winning out over tiny single use photo printers in this roundup, but to be honest the distinction is not just made because of the broad functionality and applicability of the Lexmark P6250.

While the epithet 'multimedia PC' used to be bandied about to over-hype any PC in the mid-'90's that was capable of playing music, rudimentary video, and games, the descriptive was overused so much on sub-par PCs that the impact of any real multimedia capabilities was diminished in the wash of pretenders.

101 Killer Apps for your Pocket PC is a handy reference freeware and shareware book for users of Pocket PC PDAs. It's quite comprehensive, but very application biased.

While not unfamiliar with barebones PCs and small components designed to take your PC out of the study and into the lounge room, the MSI MEGA PC is the first out-of-the-box system we've reviewed that would snuggle right in amongst your hi-fi components.

The Next Big Thing is Really Small, by Uldrich and Newberry, is a strange beast. Hyping the upcoming "nanotechnology age" and how businesses should prepare, the book is part nanotechnology primer, part prophetic tome, part educational text and 100% nanotech hype. Suffering from more than a bit of 'isn't nanotechnology great!' which particularly pervades the early chapters, the authors have their work cut out for them as nanotech has yet to really manifest.

If your desk is anything like mine, the monitor is ringed with untidy stacks and toppled piles of CDs. It's not all chaos - there's a chronological order to it - the most recently used discs are those thrown on top.