Last week, in honour of the Windows 7 launch, we covered Microsoft's biggest successes in the computing field. This week, in the interest of balance, we're looking to the company's dark side..

The strange, the antique and the downright geeky – we chronicle the 10 best (and worst) vintage tech advertisements of all time

Bringing destruction to life on screen is a everyday job for the effects wizards behind the upcoming film 2012. In fact, the filmmakers produced a whopping million gigabytes of data

Stuart Turton spends the fourth day of his one week odyssey with Linux, hailing the ease of GIMP, before a graphics card meltdown destroys his desktop and forces him to rethink his next move.

All-in-one professional system toolkit

So, the last big name has fallen. HP gave out in April 2008, and both Dell and Toshiba's resistance crumbled by the autumn. But it's taken Sony until the middle of 2009 to produce what it confesses to be a netbook, the VAIO Mini W Series.

The initial purchase price of a printer can be difficult to see past when you're making a buying decision, and it's tempting to simply go for the cheapest available - but inkjet printing can be deceptive.