Buyer's Guides

Many of you asked for a round-up of 27" IPS-based displays, and here it is. Although these screens feature similar specifications, you might be surprised at how much they differ, both in performance and price. Which of the three is right for you?

AMD’s Brazos platform, driven by the Zacate APU, offers a lot of performance per watt. It comes up short on features, though. Eight manufacturers try to change that perception by adding slots, controllers, and even overclocking in a couple of cases.

Do you own an inkjet printer? If you are concerned with the quality of your prints, you will want to read this article. We go over the technical differences between paper from Brother, Dynex, Epson, HP, and Kodak, and why one gets our recommendation.

In our Brother inkjet buyer’s guide, things were fairly simple. Across the entire group, the basic printing engine was the same. With laser/LED printers, things get more intricate.

Remember the idea of the “paperless office?” If the last 20 years have taught us anything about paper, it’s that paper use is indeed declining—as a percentage of total document handling.

It’s time to focus on basic PC audio with a two-channel speaker roundup. We look at the Altec Lansing Expressionist Bass FX3022, Bowers & Wilkins MM-1, Creative Gigaworks T40 Series II, and M-Audio Studiophile AV 40 to see what these systems can offer.

Is it just us, or are 5.1- and 7.1-channel speaker systems impractical for PCs? In our 2.1 speaker roundup, we look at the Corsair SP2500 and Antec/Soundscience Rockus 3D|2.1, along with the Creative Gigaworks 3D, Klipsch Promedia 2.1, and Logitech Z623.

New benchmarks, new test methods, and new hardware mark exciting updates to this month’s System Builder Marathon. Today, we cover the most exciting part of all: the value competition. Remember, we're giving all three systems away, so enter to win them!

We run through an in-depth guide to 10.1" netbooks from Acer, Asus, Dell, Gateway, HP, Lenovo, and MSI. We even coded a special set of benchmarks. If you are in the market for a netbook, this guide gives you the performance and design cues you need.