We've been anxious to get our hands on the $949 HP Pavilion Slimline S3330f ever since it was announced just prior to this year's Consumer Electronics Show. Now that we've given it a thorough going over, and compared it with some of its competition, we're happy to report that this tiny PC lives up to our high expectations. It brings more entertainment capability, and at a better price, than any other system on the market. We'd recommend it to anyone looking to purchase a home theater PC, sub-$1,000 or otherwise.

HP's Pavilion Slimline series has done well here at CNET recently, despite a rocky start in 2005. The last three versions, however, have been Editors' Choice winners. The S3330f continues the trend. On the surface, this PC stands out for the fact that it costs less than $1,000 and comes with a Blu-ray/HD DVD combination optical drive. For those reasons alone, it might be worth purchasing for some of you.

Introduced in the fall of 2006, the current version of Apple's 13-inch MacBook laptop was a revolutionary product, combining Intel's Core 2 Duo CPUs with Apple's much-lauded operating system. Add in Apple extras such as the iSight camera, Front Row remote, iLife software, and MagSafe power adapter, and you have what is arguably one of the best-loved laptops on the planet.

Since then, Apple has been content to issue minor periodic hardware upgrades, which, while not all that exciting, continue to add CPU horsepower while keeping prices steady. The latest update, from November 2007, bumped up the top available CPU to a 2.2GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, and added Intel's Santa Rosa platform and slightly better integrated graphics, resulting in a modest boost in performance. But you'll probably be much more interested in Apple's new Leopard version of its OS X operating system, which comes preinstalled on new MacBooks. It adds a handful of useful new features, keeping the MacBook in our top tier of laptop recommendations, even if we're secretly itching for something new.