A flexible and powerful livingroom PC that ticks almost all the right boxes, as well as being great value.

An impressive touchscreen all-in-one PC for an equally impressive price, but the single-core Atom holds it back

Intriguing styling makes this near-silent media-centre PC stand out, but it has its foibles

Great design and comprehensive features make it a truly great Media Center PC. Only the price lets it down.

A stylish and usable touchscreen PC that’s right at home in the living room. With Windows 7 promising touch-control, this could be the future of desktop PCs.

Flexible, beautifully designed and reasonably priced. An excellent attempt to attract the masses.

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.

A big brash, powerful pc with loads of features and a giant screen. It’s a good thing, because the orange case distracts from the DDR5’s true purpose: performance.

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

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.