We are proud to present our roll-call of honour: the best of the past year's technology, and our guide to the brands you can trust and the sites from which to buy.

The votes are still coming in and the arguments raging, but the nominees for the PC Advisor Awards have been decided for another year. As with years past, there are nearly two-dozen prizes. Many of our award categories have been wrangled over by our team of reviewers and writers, while the rest will be decided by PC Advisor readers before the winners are announced.

The purpose of the PC Advisor Awards is to showcase excellence across the wide range of products and services we cover online, in our apps, and in the PC Advisor print and digital magazines. Nominees and winners have been chosen from a year’s worth of reviews, so each represents the best of the best in its particular category.

For the Hardware awards, we've split up the categories along similar lines to the Top 5 charts we update every month, while we’ve divided the Software section by program type.

In each case, products in contention had to have been reviewed by PC Advisor editors during 2012. Those reviews could have been online or in print – or, most often, both.

In addition, there are five PC Advisor Reader Awards. We are running an online survey, inviting UK consumers to have their say on the best laptop and desktop PC brands and the best online retailers. From the votes we receive we’ll be able to deduce valuable feedback about the brands you favour and how well they live up to expectations. So don't forget to have your say!

Click here to vote in the reader awards.