The UK's top PC makers revealed - and much more

After three months of reader voting, PC Pro can now reveal the final shortlist for its awards - given to the companies that offer the best customer service and produce the most reliable products. With more than 16,000 people giving feedback on everything from their notebook to their web host, the PC Pro Awards give an unmatched insight into the level of customer service UK technology buyers receive. Most importantly, we don't just ask people to "vote" for their favourite companies - all this reveals is how big the company is. ...more

Swedes make music search out listener

A group of Swedish scientists is working on a technology that automatically delivers music to a phone or MP3 player without the user ever having to ask. The Push!Music technology will look for mobile devices in the vicinity and then read what music is stored on them and what has been listened to in the past. New music is then delivered via the wireless connection. ...more

Creative inspires upgrades

The complete audio set-up out of the box. Creative Labs is combining its Inspire 5.1 5300 speaker system with its SoundBlaster Audigy Player PCI add-in sound card in a bundle priced at ?149. ...more

Sun to rent CPU time on server farm

Sun's COO Jonathan Schwartz has outlined a new direction for his company in the form of a cycle farm. Such a farm would rent out CPU time by the hour for a nominal charge - 99 cents for the use of a dual CPU 'node' - meaning that companies with complex computing tasks which only need to be done a few times a year can send that job to the cycle farm, rather than having to lay out for a rarely used server farm of their own. And any spare capacity left over once the job is complete can be sold back to the farm. ...more

Skype announces v2.6 preview

Skype has announced a preview of version 2.6 of its Internet comms software for Windows. The main events for 2. ...more