We’ve provided some buyer’s guides for system builders so far, but today we’re going to ditch the DIY sector and instead look at pre-built laptop options, with a focus on Ultrabooks and other ultraportables. Not everyone needs or even wants an ultraportable, so we recognize that the recommendations here are for a specific subset of users, but if you’re looking for something highly portable and you don’t mind paying a bit more for quality, we have some suggestions.

Though mobile devices continue to consume more computing marketshare at the expense of traditional desktop PCs, phones and tablets, and to an extent even laptops, simply cannot compete with desktops for getting work done. Workstation productivity systems aren't particularly sexy like powerful gaming computers or svelte small form factors HTPCs, but very few people earn a living playing games or watching movies.

The systems outlined in this guide are built to produce, not to consume. Whether you're interested in producing and editing HD video content, prosumer-grade photography work, financial data analysis, scientific computing, or something else, you need a desktop computer. In this guide we outline three productivity machines at a range of prices, featuring the latest CPUs from both Intel and AMD.

There have been many interesting developments in the small form factor market segment since our last SFF buyer's guide. Specifically, current-generation Intel Ivy Bridge CPUs and AMD Trinity APUs use less power than their respective predecessors, and GPUs from both AMD and NVIDIA are similarly less power hungry than last year's architectures. Using less electricity translates to emitting less heat, meaning small form factor systems are more viable than ever. Further, there are many new mini-ITX cases available to house the latest products from Intel, NVIDIA, and AMD. In this guide we outline budget-friendly general use tiny desktops, a small file server, and svelte gaming systems.

While AMD's second generation "Trinity" APUs (Accelerated Processing Units) have been available in pre-built desktops and laptops for many months now, the chips and accompanying motherboards themselves have only been available in retail channels for DIY desktop builders for a few weeks. Trinity is based on AMD's newest "Piledriver" CPU and "Cayman" GPU architectures and uses socket FM2. Like its Llano APU predecessor, the Trinity APU offers respectable CPU performance and discrete-level GPU performance on the same die, all with low power consumption. While APUs have been very popular in laptops, we outline in this guide how Trinity can be pressed into service on the desktop. Read on for our recommended general home/office usage, HTPC, and budget gaming system builds.

Intel has dominated the midrange and high-end segments of the desktop processor market since the release of its Sandy Bridge architecture in early 2011. A few months ago we saw the release of Intel's Ivy Bridge architecture—the tick to Sandy Bridge's tock. It's only recently however that we have seen the release of motherboards based on Intel's B75 chipset, which is aimed at rounding out the lower-end of the Ivy Bridge motherboard market. Also recently, Intel has released lower-mid range Ivy Bridge CPUs: the Core i3-3220 and Pentium Dual Core G2120.

Along with these new releases, new parts and price cuts in video cards have also introduced more options into the midrange market. SSDs likewise continue to fall in price; whereas just a year ago the midrange system included only budget SSDs, today's midrange budgets can comfortably accommodate performance SSDs. Finally, there are many new, nice cases for buyers looking to build a system that hits the sweet spot for desktop computing. In this guide, we'll discuss gaming and productivity machines that cost anywhere from $800 up to around $1,200.

Most of the systems I build for friends and clients are destined to spend their days performing basic computing tasks like checking email and Facebook accounts, shopping for shoes and such, word processing, household finance spreadsheet analysis, Skyping, and so on. Computer hardware capabilities have so far outpaced the requirements of these tasks that many people now do them on their phone.

But when it comes to considerations like a comfortable, ergonomic keyboard and mouse, a larger display, user serviceability and upgradeability, and of course the satisfaction that comes only from DIY, the desktop is still king of the computing hill. In the last few years I've continually marvelled at how much computing power so little money can buy. Read on for our lastest recommendations for building a capable computer on a budget.

Home Theater PCs (HTPCs) are becoming more and more popular due to a number of reasons. The desire of consumers to watch and enjoy their media, be it Blu-rays/DVDs or broadcast content, in an independent manner (i.e. not limited by DRM restrictions such as with Tivo recordings or even just optical media) has enabled the HTPC industry to gain a lot of relevance, as opposed to getting tied down with non-upgradeable consumer electronics equipment. All three major vendors (Intel, AMD, and NVIDIA) pay quite a bit of attention to the HTPC market in their products, but it is universally agreed that AMD represents some of the most economical HTPC building blocks targeted towards budget system builders, so that's our focus for today.

It has now been almost a year since the Llano lineup was launched; by integrating a CPU and GPU into the same die and bringing along AMD's expertise in the GPU arena for HTPCs, these APUs (Accelerated Processing Units) offer a lot to the budget HTPC builders. In today's piece, we will be taking a look at how to build a HTPC system using the Llano platform. We'll cover options based on various form factors, and performance and cost will be analyzed. Note that the Llano processors might not be the latest and greatest, but when it comes to pricing, it is going to be quite difficult to beat--at least until the desktop variants of Trinity come around. We will also assume that you are aware of the technical merits of the Llano APU lineup, as we will not be covering any benchmarks or doing any comparative studies across products from other companies.

After covering the budget and midrange sectors of the DIY PC market, as well as pre-built desktops and laptops, today we have a guide outlining mainstream high-end builds. Saying the computers outlined in this guide are capable is an understatement—these are seriously powerful (and spendy!) systems. These rigs check out around $2000, at the top of the mainstream market. Each of them will be able to serve their owners well for years to come.

We start with a fancy mini-ITX HTPC that has lots of room for a huge media library and is capable of encoding videos quickly, followed by an impressive gaming box, and finish with a powerful workstation featuring Intel's latest CPU architecture, Sandy Bridge-E.

The latest edition of our Holiday 2011 guides focuses on midrange desktops. If you enjoy the prospect of building your own PC or you just prefer the ability to customize every component, we'll have recommendations. We'll outline three different systems at $800, $1000, and $1200, with processors from AMD and Intel.

The first system we've put together is an AMD Llano APU-based PC designed to deliver acceptable gaming performance at medium resolutions as well as great "daily driver" general computing performance. Next up, we cover our latest iteration of a now "classic" i5-2500K build that offers better gaming and computing capabilities for a few hundred dollars more than the AMD build. Finally, we have an i7-2600K rig that focuses on raw computational power and eschews graphics for the time being (though you can easily add your own). So whether you're upgrading or building new, we have suggestions. Read on for more details.

We say it every year, but the trends continue so we’ll keep repeating it: laptops and mobile devices are becoming increasingly popular, often at the cost of desktop sales. This year we saw a lot of people looking at smartphones and tablets along with laptops, and sales of those devices have skyrocketed. Still, if you need to do some serious work—writing a large document or email, working on a spreadsheet or presentation, etc.—you still need a real computer while you travel. Whether you want something for work, school, or play, we’ve got recommendations in our annual…

So pull up a chair, wrap up in a nice blanket, and get yourself a steaming cup of hot chocolate while we cover the laptop market from top to bottom. Netbooks, Chromebooks, ultrabooks, laptops and notebooks—we’ve got it all right here. Even better, you can do some of your Christmas shopping without even leaving the comforts of your own home. What better way to enjoy the season than by staying indoors?

While we at AnandTech recognize that a good portion of our readership prefers to roll their own as far as desktops go, not everyone is that way. Sometimes there are also situations where we'd be better off just recommending a pre-built desktop to family than damning ourselves to being tech support at all hours for the next few years. With that in mind, we bring you our...

If you want to kick back for a change, send something to family or a friend, or whatever your reason for going with a pre-built system, we have a recommendation for you this holiday season.

The recent launch of Intel Sandy Bridge-based Celeron CPUs and the proliferation of budget-priced LGA 1155 socket motherboards bring fresh competition to the budget desktop computer market segment, long dominated by AMD. AMD's Fusion APUs are also available for budget builders, and we explore the performance of the A4-3300 APU. RAM prices continue to stay depressed, and some excellent new budget cases have arrived on the market recently. In short, there are many factors aligning to offer consumers capable yet inexpensive build options for the upcoming holiday season.

In this guide we will highlight a variety of lower-priced products to keep your eyes on during the impending sales, along with providing some basic benchmarking of budget motherboards and CPUs. Ready to put together some fiscally responsible builds for the holidays? Then read on....

The proliferation of mobile devices, multi-computer homes, broadband internet access, inexpensive mass storage, and the replacement of many other home electronics by the PC (such as media devices like DVD, BRD, and CD players by HTPCs) has resulted in ever-increasing interest in specialized file server computers.  Whether you're a typical home user with a desktop and a laptop or a power user with multiple desktops, laptops, netbooks, and tablets who also has remote access to home systems from work or on the road, your computing experience could likely be enriched by shared data access.  Whether your budget and storage needs are modest or extensive, we have you covered in the latest builder's guide to file server systems.

It’s that time of year again, when thousands of wide-eyed 17- and 18-year-olds will be setting foot on college campuses for the first time. Many more students will be returning for their second, third, or fourth (or fifth or sixth or…) fall semester. Whether you’re a student yourself, parent, other relative, or friend, this guide covers many aspects of college computing. From DIY and retail desktops to laptops to peripherals to gadgets like ereaders to software, we discuss how students use technology and recommend many products, from budget offerings to more powerful gear that will hopefully make higher education more productive and enjoyable!

Almost a half-year after the launch of the second-generation Core processors, Intel’s newest CPUs remain dominant in the mid- to high-end desktop computing markets. Since the January release of the initial Sandy Bridge chips, myriad newer, niche-specific CPUs have arrived at retailers. Importantly, the Cougar Point chipset debacle is entirely resolved, with all Sandy Bridge-supporting motherboards available through reputable retailers free of the degrading SATA ports that plagued Sandy Bridge’s first few months.

Like the Sandy Bridge CPUs themselves, the Cougar Point motherboards have diversified into a range of budgets and feature sets. Given the recently announced delay of AMD’s upcoming Bulldozer processors for desktops, Sandy Bridge will remain unchallenged at the high-end of desktop computing until at least September. If you want to build a powerful desktop to use when you’re not lounging by the pool and grilling delicious meats this summer, this guide has you covered with a $500 budget build, a $1,000 midrange system, and a $2,000 high-end gaming-centered system (give or take).

Last month our builder’s guide focused on nettops: low power, less capable, physically diminutive desktop computer systems. We included a non-nettop CPU (Intel Core i3) system as a substantially more capable but only slightly more power-hungry alternative to the nettops. This system and the mini-ITX small form factor (SFF) prompted a lot of reader interest in this typically underappreciated desktop computing segment. In response, this month we’re outlining myriad mini-ITX SFF systems—from basic office machines to powerful gaming rigs.

Most of our Buyer's Guides focus on full desktop builds, but what about something a little smaller? Perhaps you're looking for an inexpensive yet sufficiently powerful system to function as an HTPC, or maybe you want a low power device so you can cut down a bit on power bills. Whatever the reason, if you're interested in building a mini-ITX system or a nettop we've got several takes on the concept to discuss.

With the recent launch of Sandy Bridge, we had hoped to put together some Buyers' Guides covering the changes in the market. Unfortunately, with the recall/bug of the 6-series chipsets, SNB is now on hold. There will always be newer and faster parts just over the horizon, but while we await SNB and Bulldozer, we felt the time was ripe for a Budget Buyers' Guide update. We have three complete system builds, as well as a variety of potential upgrades, with pricing ranging from $400 just for the main box and components up to nearly $800 for a complete system with some worthwhile upgrades.

Since there are so many smartphones on the market, we figured that the holiday season was a great time to write our first smartphone buyer's guide. And so we continue our 2010 Holiday Buyer's Guides with the handset sector. This year was the first year that we got some real, honest competition in the smartphone sector. Google's 2.0 version of Android released late last year to great success, and versions 2.1 and 2.2 only continued that trend. Apple, always good for some drama, kept it up this year with the iPhone 4 and the ensuing Antennagate scandal. Microsoft finally made a serious play for the handheld sector with the brand new, Zune-based Windows Phone 7. Palm got bought out by HP, BlackBerry finally got a WebKit browser in BB6, and Nokia continues pair increasingly awesome hardware with Symbian on everything not called the N900. Safe to say, we had a pretty busy year in the smartphone segment.

We've split our guide into 6 segments - one for each carrier, then one for unlocked and international devices. We put in a page for tablets, since that's still an expanding market closely related to smartphones. Over the next few months, we'll see rapid growth in tablets and slate computing devices, but for now, it's not big enough to warrant more than a page. So, we'll kick it off with the carriers, starting with AT&T.