DVD writers (AOpen, Panasonic, Pioneer, Plextor, Ricoh, Sony)

Although still expensive, DVD writers are slowly coming down in price and are finding their way into high-end PCs. But the battle still rages over which format (DVD-R/-RW, DVD+R/+RW or DVD-RAM) is the best. And, for that matter, which one will become the industry standard, which is a different question altogether.
The battle between DVD recording [...]

Affordable real-world notebooks (ACi, NEC, Rock, Sony, Toshiba)

Manufacturers and suppliers of notebooks are sometimes rather too free with their use of the term ‘desktop replacement’. They would have us believe that this or that portable PC will simply make a conventional desktop redundant by doing all the same tricks but out of a vastly smaller box.
This is misleading, but it doesn’t necessarily [...]

Palmtops/PDAs (Casio, Compaq, Handspring, HP, Palm, Sony, Toshiba)

Personal digital assistants (PDAs, or palmtops if you prefer) have come of age. Whatever the operating system they use, these gadgets are now as popular with consumers as they are with the business community. So we’ve decided to take another look (you can read our last round-up here) at these pocket-sized computers.
Microsoft’s recently launched Pocket [...]

Speedstep notebooks (Dell, Gateway, HP, Rock, Sony)

After ‘excessive weight’, the most common grumble about notebooks tends to be battery life… or lack of it. This is a problem which just won’t go away, and the trend towards faster processors, larger screens, more memory and generally more of everything only makes things harder on the battery that has to run the show.
Obviously [...]