With a performance reflecting its relatively lower price, the Brother didn't score as well in most printing tests. The photo print in particular took over four times longer than many of the other printers, and its quality was inferior in comparison. Text quality was also poor, particularly on the smaller 6pt font where visible banding occurred.

Noise levels and heat dissipation are two important factors in the design of small form factor (SFF) PCs. Low noise is particularly important in the growing home theatre PC market, where designs such as the Soltek EQ3801 are increasingly popular due their attractively small size.

Taking the concept of the Tablet PC to the budget end of the market is the AceCAD DigiMemo A501. It uses an electronic pen with an ordinary nib and a magnetic backing plate to replicate notes you write on ordinary paper.It will take an A5 pad which slots inside and can be up to 120 sheets thick.

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 Aspire is a very good unit with several features which enhance its usability. It will suit on-the-go entertainment and productivity, at a price that won't burn your wallet.

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?

A decent PC with media abilities bolted on, transforming this into a good lounge machine.

Sony typically asks a little more than their competitors for similar products, but this usually pays off in the quality of workmanship and the reliability associated with most Sony products. The Sony VAIO VGN-S28GP is an extremely well-built notebook and should provide rock-solid performance for years to come.

How easy is it to replace a battery? Ty Pendlebury investigates when internal batteries can cost you a trip to a service centre.

The Twinhead Efio is a mixed beast. It has some very good features, such as an all-magnesium casing and ATI Mobility 9700, but it also has some middling features, like a relatively slow 1.8GHz Intel processor and 4:3 screen. The unit is well made and well set out however.

The BenQ Joybook 7000 v07 is a multimedia PC with some MCE-like abilities. It comes loaded with QMedia Center - another MCE clone - and a PCMCIA-sized remote. QMedia operates much like MCE in that there is a main page – coloured BenQ purple of course - from which the usual Pictures and Videos icons enable navigation of the user’s media files.

The ASUS is one tough little cookie. Its cover and palmrest are encased in brushed aluminium lending the unit a reassuring sense of rigidity and roadworthiness. The 15.4" screen is bright, and its default resolution of 1680x1050 makes text sharp but a little small to read unless up close. The unit also comes with a built in TV-tuner, and also sports a TV-antenna output.

When it comes to accessories, the Aspire has one of the best bundles supplied for this roundup: including an MCE remote and a radio/TV antenna! It also has a decent specification list: 3Ghz Pentium 4; 160GB HDD; and 512MB RAM. The only sticking point here, amongst all this multimedia goodness, is the inclusion of the Mobility X300 video card. It's like building a Ferrari and installing a two-stroke motor. It doesn't make much sense.

Nominating Sato as our winner for the desktop machines this month was fairly straightforward, especially when compared to deciding the outcome of the closely-fought notebook war. Because, even though the Sato was outdone by one or two systems in terms of performance, nothing beat it on pure value for money.