Ableton’s flair for innovation shows no sign of diminishing. This is the best version of Live yet.

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

Advanced long document functionality and screen-based publishing via Flash contribute to another Quark-bashing.

An excellent release that reworks Photoshop’s core colour-correction capabilities, making them even more powerful

Support for new file types and platforms plus improved 3D rendering, but director is yesterday’s tool – and it shows

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

Yet another leap forward for After Effects, which cements its status as the leading PC video compositing tool.

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

Photoshop moves beyond photo editing to conquer completely new territory.

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

Improved interface, object and layer handling, plus integrated 3D painting add greatly to power, usability and value

With a fantastic new suite of plug-ins on top of an already hugely powerful production environment, it’s hard to imagine a musician for whom Sonar 5 isn’t perfect.

For those with deep pockets and big hearts, this DVD recorder comes with full PVR functionality and an 80GB hard drive.

The IBM ThinkCentre S50 Ultra Small is the world's smallest 'full-function' desktop computer according to manufacturer IBM. Whether it's the world's smallest or not, it's certainly one of the smallest we've seen.

The Techmart SOHO is the only system in this roundup to be supplied with a copy of Windows XP Home rather than XP Professional. This highlights Intermedia's emphasis on the small office, home office environment with this system, where the additional networking features of XP Pro aren't necessary. Even so, it does mean you'll be restricted to using a peer-to-peer network, and you'll need an upgrade if you ever want to set up a client-server system. For the extra $90, it might be worth future-proofing and upgrading to Pro.

Although falling slightly below par in our quality testing, the IntelliPro 4000GX managed to claw back points with a score 16 percent above the average for value, primarily due to its incredibly low initial purchase price.

One of the mantras of business computing is reliability. It all ties into TCO (total cost of ownership) - if a mission critical PC suffers a hardware failure, the resulting downtime can cost you a lot more than the price of an entire new system. As such, we in the PC Authority Labs always place a high emphasis on a good on-site warranty, such as that provided by a few manufacturers this month, including Pluscorp with its INTEQ V26.

There is a growing demand for a decent all-in-one digital imaging pack that covers everything from organising your photographs to editing your videos and eventually burning them onto DVD. Ulead has attempted to provide it by bundling four of its core programs into a single package and there are few more comprehensive digital imaging suites than StudioQuartet. While the price tag is out of the range of many home users, the enthusiast will save up for it and provide themselves with everything they need to create multimedia projects.

In conjunction with several of their other top-of-the-line software application upgrades, discreet have released the long-awaited combustion 3. Unique in some of its features and price point, combustion seems to have been searching for its market-place slot. Sharing the code, tools and quality of its bigger siblings, flame, inferno and smoke, combustion has, in the last two years, pulled its price down from 10 thousand dollars to around two thousand.

After the launch of the latest Acrobat a few months ago, everything went quiet on the Adobe front. It's now clear what the company was working on, with the simultaneous launch of each of its main creative design packages -- Photoshop/ImageReady, Illustrator, InDesign and GoLive. (Please see individual reviews of all of these packages on this month's cover CD.)