Stories by: Jesse Sutton

Microwave ovens were considered a luxury item in kitchens 20 years ago, but today a microwave is considered as important to your kitchen's cooking and heating requirements as an oven or stove.

Probably one of the most impressive notebooks we ever tested was the Dell XPS M1330. Now we're taking a look at Dell's 15in version of this beast-machine, the Dell M1530 and we're equally impressed.

The only thing that's more heartbreaking than damaging your brand new electronic gear is watching it be destroyed by something you had no control over. Surge protection is an easily overlooked, but highly important addition to any expensive electronics setup. Considering the cost of TVs and home theatre systems, making the time to choose a surge protector is probably worth the effort.

Star Wars: Force Unleashed is more than just a video game; it's another chapter in the epic tale.

This year's top 10 April Fool's day pranks were not only funny, but had lots of effort put into them as well.

With a strong focus on family use, entertainment and media management, the HP Pavilion M9190a is a good choice for homes with plenty of digital media. The combination of its Blu-ray/HD-DVD player with LightScribe DVD functionality, 15-in-1 media card reader, TV-tuner and its easy to use Media Drives make this PC very handy to have for the media-oriented household.

First, let's clear any doubt about it; the new GeForce EN9800GX2, as you may have suspected, is essentially two G92 GPUs (similar to what can be found on the 8800GTS 512MB cards) sandwiched together in a move that reflects AMD's HD3870X2 release earlier this year and, lest we forget, NVIDIA's own 7950GX2 of mid-2006 fame.

Sony has never been shy about introducing new form factors or designs to the market, which is why it's no surprise to see the VAIO TP2 G home entertainment PC roll off the Sony production line and into our living rooms. Shaped like an oversized biscuit tin, the VAIO TP2 G is not quite a notebook, not quite a desktop PC and, unfortunately, not quite a media centre. Between its design, the Blu-ray player and the HDMI output, this Sony VAIO TP2 G does a good job of filling its role as a living room PC, but it does have its flaws.

It's hard to look past the stark ugliness of the NEC ShieldPRO ruggedised tablet/notebook PC, but give it a break; it's not designed to be pretty. In fact, it's designed for quite the opposite. If ever there was a notebook to let the boys take down into the mine, this is it. Designed to take some punishment, the NEC ShieldPRO includes shock resistance, dust protection and waterproofing amongst its tricks.

Just weeks ago the Toshiba Satellite P200 (PSPB6A-0CS04M) would have been joining the ranks of high-end entertainment machines we've reviewed. Unfortunately, the recent withdrawal of Toshiba's HD-DVD technology from the high-definition format war has left a stain on the value of this otherwise excellent notebook.

PCs now come in all shapes and forms, so here are a few unique form factors that add some unusual style to your setup.