Acer TravelMate 8000
The first Dothan notebook to roll off the rank, we were interested to see exactly how much real-world gain Intel is offering in its revised Centrino platform.

Behind the jargon
The web was designed to be a simple publishing medium but over the years it’s been extended by a range of technologies. Here’s a list of jargon busters...

BenQ Joybook 8100-V13
A fantastic specification notebook with all the trimmings you'd expect to find on more expensive notebooks, the Joybook 8100-V13 has a 15.4in widescreen WXGA with native 1280 x 800 resolution. With ATI's Mobility RADEON 9600 graphics, boasting 64MB dedicated video memory, it's great for DVD playback or gaming -- the unit returned 9,502 marks under 3DMark01SE Pro, more than enough to provide comfortable gameplay with a decent number of fps even in recent games. BenQ has gone as far as to include not just a DVD-ROM for DVD movie playback, but an optical DVD writer, capable of 2-speed DVD+R media writing, ideal for both business archiving or for personal backup.

Best of Blogs -- Never Threaten to Eat Your Co-Workers
Blogging has been a growing online phenomenon for the past few years. Some blogs are funny, some profound and moving, others annoying and petulant: but all blogs are personal outpourings. Many blog authors are people who never considered themselves writers or journalists, yet there's a vast range and amount of high-quality blog content on the internet.

Best of Blogs -- Never Threaten to Eat Your Co-Workers
Blogging has been a growing online phenomenon for the past few years. Some blogs are funny, some profound and moving, others annoying and petulant: but all blogs are personal outpourings. Many blog authors are people who never considered themselves writers or journalists, yet there's a vast range and amount of high-quality blog content on the internet.

Cracking the code
Look at any web page in your browser’s source code view and you’ll see the actual visible content of the page surrounded by reams of text in angled brackets.

Getting good with Google
Every search engine uses a different method to score and rank websites. We give you the tips and tricks to get your site higher on the results page.

Getting Happy with CMS
Content management systems promise to take the drudgery out of site maintenance. Angus Kidman looks under the hood.

HITVIDEOLAB 6-CH SURROUND SOUND
Surround sound is an important part of DVD movies and the uptake of full surround sound in computer games is increasing. Most soundcards and even integrated sound systems on a motherboard have support for 5.1 surround sound audio, and yet many systems are used with 2.1 speaker systems or with stereo headphones.

How to make a killer website
Want to kick your website up a notch? Jacinta Thomler gives you 10 ways to make your site stand out.

i-mate Smartphone2
The i-mate Smartphone2 is one of the new breed to feature the new Smartphone 2003 OS, and is almost identical to the O2 Xphone (March 2004, page 55), except for a few cosmetic changes.

Jakob Nielsen’s mistakes
Jakob Nielsen is the world’s leading expert on web usability. Over the years, he’s pointed out many mistakes web designers are making. He’s put together a list of mistakes.

Labs roundup: Sub $2500 Consumer notebooks: Introduction
Sixteen notebooks under $2500, we've separated the winners with the goods from the less impressive performers.

Labs roundup: Sub $2500 Consumer notebooks: Performance Analysis
How much notebook will $2500 actually buy you? The PC Authority Labs team investigates.

MSI MegaBook M510C
Taking first place overall, the MegaBook M510C had a bit of a mixed run to the final score tally, managing only fifth place in PCMark04 then unanimously taking out first place with a score nearly breaking 10,000 3DMarks, impressive for a notebook, let alone one under $2500.

MYOB Accounting Plus + Quicken Australia
The annual battle of the small business accounting programs has flared again as both MYOB and Quicken roll-out their 2004 editions. While both have made several tweaks and additions to last year’s models, the main difference this time around is in MYOB’s new product activation model. While many users will consider it overkill, there is little doubt that MYOB and others have suffered as a result of software piracy over the years and this time MYOB is determined to stop it.

Pinnacle ShowCenter
It turns out that Microsoft [I]is[/I] bringing out Windows XP Media Center Edition in Australia, but until such time as it materialises -- and Microsoft Australia is being very sketchy on the dates -- those of us looking to integrate our PC media files with our televisions and hi-fi systems have to turn to bridging solutions.

Punch Biz+
Punch Technology's Punch Biz+ system features a 2.8GHz Intel Pentium 4 processor, half gigabyte of PC3200 DDR-SDRAM, 52-speed CD-RW and a 17in monitor for under $2000 -- impressive pricing for this sort of spec machine.

Sponsored Feature: Frequently Asked Questions about Sony DVD players
FAQ: 10 Frequently Asked Questions about Sony DVD players

Sun Java Desktop 2003
Recognising that the Linux desktop market is only going to grow, and that there's money to made in the corporate arena, Sun's Java Desktop 2003 is squarely aimed at companies looking for a cheap, easy, and compatible alternative to Microsoft's (often expensive) dominance.

Zensonic Z300
This unit plays more than just your rental movies and existing DVD discs, it's also capable of VBR MP3, WMA, JPEG, PhotoCD, HDCD Xvid, AVI, MPEG layers 1, 2, and 4 play, the latter of which is more commonly referred to as DivX, named after the compression codec.