Stories by: Jesse Sutton

Design and hardware-wise the Sony VAIO VGC-M18G is a stone's throw from the Sony VAIO VGO-LA38G, but there are a few significant differences. Although it aims to be a desktop PC, the VAIO LM18G hints at its notebooks roots, making for a stylish and functional PC with a unique form-factor named the "Panel PC".

Acer's tiny Veriton L460 business PC is one of the best options for businesses with cramped working environments, or those looking for a PC with lower power consumption and will run quietly, too.

Larger than the Acer Veriton 1000, but smaller than the Lenovo ThinkCentre A61e, HP's new small business, small form factor PC does a good job of mixing form with function.

USB hubs are not exactly life changing technology. Their sole aim, generally, is to create more USB ports, and that's about it. However, Belkin has managed to take an otherwise plain and simple product and make it more interesting and useful. Surely when you gaze up at the bland, piano black image you balk at the idea that this product can be useful, but pay attention.

Lenovo's A61e is not only the smallest form factor we've seen from the ThinkCentre range, but it's also the greenest product available from Lenovo. Built on AMD's 45Watt Athlon 64 X2 BE 2350 CPU, the Lenovo A61e is designed for low power and noise. Although we are unable to determine how energy efficient it really is, it is certainly quiet and takes up very little working space on the desk.

Maxtor's OneTouch 4 Mini is a simple device that's made quite useful with some basic but helpful software. This small, dare we say, funky looking portable hard drive is a great option and a must have for regular users of multiple PCs or those wishing to share their data wealth with friends and colleagues. The OneTouch name comes from a single button on the enclosure, which instantly performs a task you've allocated, such as a backup or synchronisation, but more on that later.

Gigabyte is infamous for adding a few of its own touches before releasing a product, and the Gigabyte Radeon HD2600 XT is no exception. As with many of Gigabyte's low-mid range cards, a silent, passive cooler has been installed, keeping the system quiet, while still maintaining a good thermal balance for stable operation.

Not unlike the rest of us, it seems that Acer has become tired of waiting for the high definition format war to end and has released the Acer Aspire M5630 desktop PC, a Quad Core machine with a combination Blu-ray/HD-DVD drive - nullifying the need to make a choice between the two competing formats.

Like the competing Nvidia GPU, the ATI Radeon HD 2900 XT GPU used in this Sapphire card has not only moved to DirectX 10, but has made the switch to a more efficient unified shader architecture. However, it doesn't stop there. The HD 2900 XT offers a dedicated video decoder, native Crossfire support (eliminating the need for a special 'master' card), adaptive custom filter antialiasing (CFAA), and it also boasts the first true 512-bit memory bus. Our Sapphire card has 512MB of GDDR3 memory, but DDR4 will be available in the future, too.

Sapphire is using ATI's Radeon HD 2600 XT chip, which is a step down from ATI's current flagship, the Radeon HD 2900 XT. It's aimed at mid-range users who want an affordable solution for everyday graphics and a little bit of gaming.

We've seen plenty of notebooks based on Intel's latest Centrino Duo platform (codenamed Santa Rosa), but the Zepto Znote 6625WD is one of the first of these high-end notebooks to fully utilise the potential of the 800MHz front side bus (FSB), which is offered by the 965 Express chipset in Santa Rosa. It performed well in our tests and has a stylish design that doesn't compromise build quality.