For one of the widest range of choices in both PC design and cases to houses them, Commodore offers more than 200 different finishes, superbly applied by airbrush artists.

Laptop fans don't get the professional paint job -- but several accessory companies now sell 'skins'. You can either choose one of the existing designs or upload your own photo to be turned into a fascia. At sites such as lapjacks.com, laptopskins.net and the wonderfully named backslaps.co.uk you can order self-adhesive skins from as little as £11.

What's more, everyone from Sony and Apple to Dell and even Lenovo now offer laptops in a choice of colored finishes. Asus and Acer let you advertise your allegiance to Lamborghini or Ferrari respectively, while Hannspree makes football team-themed screens as well as ones reflecting your interest in other sports.

Super-skinny models

For most of us, though, there's far more cachet in understated style.

Apple's MacBook Air is an obvious example. While Apple's claim that it's the thinnest notebook around seems a little spurious, there's no arguing about the cachet that its products have, nor the appeal of an extremely light laptop. The Air comes with either a 1.6GHz or 1.8GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, 2GB of RAM, an 80GB hard disk and 802.11n Wi-Fi. If you want to be really flash, a 64GB flash memory-based version is also available.

Famously, the MacBook Air has no optical drive, which some will find an issue, but if you're after some iconic eye-candy and want to avoid the risk of broken fingernails, the light-as-a-feather Air may well do.

The other ultra-desirable brand in the laptop stakes is Sony's Vaio range, now expanded to cover more than laptops. If it's an ultraportable model you're after, the TZ range is what you need. These are 11in laptops that weigh just 1.24kg (undercutting the Air's 1.3kg) and come with optical drives as well as Wi-Fi and generous hard disks.

As with the MacBook, a flash-memory version can be had for somewhat more than the £1,199 base price.

Entertainment today

Attaching any PC to a flashy screen -- perhaps a vast widescreen LCD or plasma -- will immediately add to its entertainment credentials, although you'd do well to check on the amount of noise the machine makes in general operation. There's a market for inaudible machines for good reason.

Just as importantly, look for support for high-definition multimedia interface (HDMI) and high-bandwidth digital content protection (HDCP) -- important standards for the latest high-definition content and the hardware that can play it. Some entertainment-focused PCs have connections for Scart leads and S-Video, as well as the more usual digital visual interconnect (DVI) and component audio and video ports. If you really want a multimedia PC that works with your set-top box, plasma screen and so on, you'll want some of these options.

Hi-Grade is about to update its DMS digital home range of compact base units with digital connectors, while Sony is making moves to bring more esoteric items into its Vaio desktop range -- including the rebranded Vaio LocationFree Base Station, which enables you to push TV and video content between machines over a web connection.

The problem with buying into the very latest technologies became apparent with the recent demise of HD DVD. Blu-ray fans may crow, but anyone with a pricey HD DVD player in their PC shouldn't worry too much.