Fujitsu Siemens Scaleo E

Built to match other home entertainment equipment, both in terms of looks and versatility, the Scaleo E from Fujitsu Siemens is a feature-packed Media Center Edition (MCE) PC.

In fact, if you weren't to look around the back or flip down the panel on the front, it could quite easily pass for an oversized DVD player.

Hiding inside this 15kg behemoth is a Pentium 4 630 (3GHz) processor and 1GB of DDR 400 Ram. The basic version ships with 512MB and is £50 cheaper than our review system.

For most forms of computing work, the Scaleo E will cope with ease, as the Sysmark 2004 SE score of 179 testifies. It's not lightning fast, but will be able to handle MCE applications efficiently.

The Intel 915 integrated graphics are pretty weak though and will definitely struggle with 3D games at any sort of decent detail settings.

This computer's real talent lies with its entertainment features. As well as running MCE, it has an impressive collection of ports and sockets on the back, catering for both computer and standard AV devices, along with a detailed LED panel on the front.

On the back sit RGB Scart, DVI, VGA and S-Video sockets for connecting to all manner of displays. Running Windows through the Scart cable lacked in definition and was only really suited to live TV or video playback - you're much better off using the DVI or VGA connection.

There's a second Scart socket too, for looping through a VCR, PVR, satellite, cable TV or games console.

The dual digital/analogue TV tuner is capable of recording two channels at once, but only when using the same format - you can't record a digital channel and an analogue one at the same time.