From iconic machines like the IBM PC to the silliness of Sony’s £1,190 netbook, we’ve scoured the darkest corners and blown dust off some of the oldest, oddest and rarest kit we can find – starting with a true icon of the industry.

IBM PC

Introduced on August 12 1981, IBM’s Personal Computer was the first machine to popularise the now-ubiquitous term – and one of these antiques sits at the back of the PC Pro Lab.

Processing grunt was provided by the single-core, 4.77MHz Intel 8088, and floppy disks and cassettes are both supported. There’s a mighty 256KB of RAM, with 64KB of that soldered onto the motherboard. The IBM PC didn’t come cheap, either: a barebones model without any drives cost $1,565 and the top-end model came with bells, whistles and a monitor for $20,000.

The motherboard includes five eight-bit Industry Standard Architecture slots, with three of ours occupied: there’s a floppy disk drive controller card a SixPakPlus memory expansion board packed with 64KB chips, and a multidisplay adapter that’s actually two slabs of PCB stuck together. In the middle of the machine is an IBM 5 ¼in Diskette Drive.

Only one question remains, though, once we’ve blown the dust off this venerable old machine – can it run Crysis?

Apple Macintosh Plus

The Macintosh Plus might be a disturbing shade of yellow but that’s hardly surprising – it first saw the light of day in 1986. Released for £2,599, it was produced until October 1990 – the longest production run of any Macintosh – and was supported by Mac OS up to 1996.

It broke ground in other ways, too. As the first Macintosh to include a SCSI port it paved the way for external devices such as hard disks, tape drives, printers and CD-ROM drives, and this was also the first Macintosh to use SIMMs for its memory – with a massive 1MB of the stuff included as standard across four 256KB sticks.

Our particular model bears the familiar Cupertino, California label on its rear, but the sticker also reveals that this machine was “Assembled in Ireland” – a far cry from today, where most technology seems to be produced in Asia.

Apple Macintosh Colour Classic

Fast forward a few years – and look under a different test-bench – and you’ll find another piece of Apple history. It’s the first compact Macintosh computer to come with a colour display, and we wouldn’t have the iMac – the world’s finest all-in-one PC – without the Colour Classic paving the way.

Originally priced at $1,400 in February 1993, it ran on Mac OS 7.6.1 – the first version of the OS to drop the “System” from its name so the more distinctive moniker could be trademarked and the OS licensed to third-party Macintosh manufacturers.

This ancient all-in-one was more upgradeable than most of today’s models, too. The Processor Direct Slot was used with the Apple IIe Card, and ran software designed for the older Apple II. This backwards compatibility was supposed to entice the education market to upgrade from Apple II machines to fully-fledged Macintoshes, but other upgrades were also available, from CPU accelerators to Ethernet and video cards.

This versatility means the Colour Classic enjoys a cult following today: users have modded the machine with Power Mac parts so its screen runs at 640 x 480 rather than 560 x 384, and others have fitted motherboards from more powerful models.

Casio Cassiopeia E-115

Technical editor Darien Graham-Smith found the Casio Cassiopeia E-115 hiding at the back of his cupboard, but it first arrived back in October 2000 when PDAs, rather than smartphones, were big news.

So, what did you get for £422? There’s the sturdy exterior, which we described as “dull-grey silver” and “resting on its laurels”, alongside a cradle that “feels cheap and doesn’t engage with the Cassiopeia as solidly as we’d like” in its full review.

It wasn’t all bad news, with a 240 x 320 LCD screen that was better than its rivals, and a 131MHz StrongARM processor that was “fast enough to ensure instantaneous contact searches and speedy application switching”, according to us. It also had 16MB of ROM and 32MB of RAM memory – “about as much as you currently need”, at least back then.

Oh, and the software? Microsoft Windows CE 3.0 PocketPC Edition. Our model is old and, presumably, scarred by Darien’s cupboard, so it wouldn’t turn on – although that’s probably for the best, given that we concluded that the Casio simply couldn’t “match the standard” set by Compaq’s iPAQ.

Apple iMac G4

The G4 marked the first major redesign of the iMac, but the forlorn model found in the PC Pro Lab has clearly seen better days. It’s missing its monitor bezel, the distinctive round base is looking grubby, and it wouldn’t turn on – although that chrome, cantilevered arm is as smooth as it was when the G4 was eased from its box in 2002.

We described the G4 as “smooth and elegant design that puts other computer makes to shame”. Even now it stands out in a sea of modern all-in-ones that all look a little too familiar.

Our review also highlighted Apple’s concentration on “excellent design and ease of use”, but that has downsides – a specification we described as “Paleolithic”. It’s the first time we’ve seen computers compared to dinosaurs, but the SDRAM was slow and the GeForce 2 MX graphics chip was a generation behind the curve. It might look nice – as Apple devices are wont to do – but PCs ran our Photoshop 7 benchmark almost twice as quickly.

Dell Latitude

The oldest laptop we managed to find demonstrates the changing of technology. This Dell Latitude isn’t quite as backward as we first thought. It’s either a C540 or C640 – we’re not sure which, as it’s been hidden on a high shelf for far too long – and it’s a mix of old problems and forgotten boons.

It’s running a Pentium 4 chip with Windows XP, but the most striking thing about this machine is its design – or lack of it. Plain plastic is the order of the day, and the lid features the familiar Dell logo, along with the kind of build quality that we’d slate if this machine were reviewed today.

The base doesn’t cover itself in glory, either, with stickers, flaps, screws, feet and even some exposed fans. It’s also obvious where laptops have fallen backwards as companies rush to build slim, snazzy Ultrabooks: we rarely see keyboards with the kind of comfort, responsiveness and travel as this Latitude offers, and the 4:3 screen has a native resolution of 1,600 x 1,200 – a huge amount of desktop real estate compared to the 1,366 x 768 and 1,600 x 900 screens that now seem to be the norm.

Nvidia GeForce 7300 GT, 7600 GS and AMD Radeon HD 2600 XT

We’ve a big plastic tub full of graphics cards in the Labs and, while most of them are recent, a trio of PCBs lurking amid the anti-static bags and DVI to D-SUB adapters come from decidedly older stock. Two Nvidia cards, the GeForce 7300 GT and 7600 GS, are joined by AMD’s Radeon HD 2600 XT.

They were launched in 2006 and 2007, and they handily illustrate the impressive speed at which technology is pushed forward. The first 28nm GPU has just arrived but, back then, Nvidia and AMD were using 90nm and 65nm processes – and the 390 million transistors in the AMD card pales when compared to the 4.3 billion in AMD’s latest.

The bandwidth statistics are telling, too: the Radeon card churns through 35.2GB/sec in its 512MB incarnation, with the 7300 GT and 7600 GS offering 10.67GB/sec and 12.8GB/sec respectively. The latest high-end card, the Radeon HD 7970, chews through 264GB/sec – and even modest boards, such as Nvidia’s GeForce GTX 550 Ti, handle 98.5GB/sec.

Oh, and our benchmarks? The 7600 GS played Call of Duty 2 at 18fps when run at 1,280 x 1,024. Bless.

Sony VAIO P-series

Sony senior vice president Mike Abary famously said his company would never join the “race to the bottom” when netbooks hit the big time, and he wasn’t joking – Sony’s VAIO P-series cost £1,190 inc VAT for the top-end model.

That money paid for radical design, with a base occupied entirely by the keyboard,  that’s still so small and fiddly that you have to peck at the keys, prod at the trackpoint and squint at the 8in 1,600 x 900 screen. The Z-series Atom was decidedly Z-list, too, thanks to performance that couldn’t match £350 rivals.

While the text is basic, it’s accurate enough for beginners. Instead, it’s the image that contains a dangerous chunk of misinformation.

The monitor on the left, labelled as a PC that uses a “standard graphics card”, is displaying a Windows desktop that’s washed out and blurry. The seemingly identical Dell TFT on the right, powered by a “high-end graphics card”, is showing the same desktop – but this time it’s much sharper and more vivid. They’re both outputting at the same resolution.

It’s true that using different screens can alter how a desktop looks, but that’s not the case here: Dell’s page uses two identical monitors that display two identical desktops, with the dramatic change in its appearance apparently caused by the different classes of discrete graphics card being used.

It is, quite simply, rubbish. Any modern discrete graphics card, whether a mid-range model or a more powerful part, is more than capable of displaying a Windows desktop. There’s no chance that by choosing two of the different graphics options available with the Optiplex 790 – let’s say the £86 inc VAT AMD Radeon HD 6350 and the £256 inc VAT dual Radeon HD 6450 option – a desktop will look any different on the cheaper card.

Dell’s page says that its picture is for “demonstrative purposes only”, but it’s not demonstrating anything that’s remotely accurate. Instead, this misleading page appears to suggest that a more expensive graphics card will mean even the Windows desktop will be made brighter and sharper.

That’s especially unfair on a page that’s clearly aimed at novice users – the exact people who will trust this information from a well-known brand, and who’ll fork out extra cash for a graphics card that’s simply unnecessary.

Dell has issued a statement regarding this issue, which we’ve posted in full below. The full story can be read here.

“Thank you for bringing this to our attention. Dell endeavours to help customers to make the best decisions regarding their purchases. It was never our intention to mislead customers, and we apologise for any confusion caused. We have now removed the image from our Global sites. Dell remains committed to delivering the best possible experience to all our customers.”

ARM and Nvidia are major mobile players, so it pays to listen when the firms announce new technologies. The latest developments from both serve up an interesting similarity with regards to how these companies are tackling one of the biggest annoyances of the modern smartphone: inefficient batteries.

ARM’s recent announcement, big.LITTLE, pairs one of its high-end Cortex A15 MPCore chips alongside an entry-level Cortex A7, which consumes much less power. It’s designed to seamlessly takes over when a device is tackling low-intensity tasks, so the power-sucking A15 is reserved for intensive games and apps.

Nvidia’s Tegra 3 chipset, meanwhile, uses a near-identical approach: the four cores on the main chip can be turned on and off to tackle everything from basic web browsing to high-end games but, if the phone’s in standby mode or you’re running low-power apps, those four cores will shut down, with processing power provided by a “Companion Core”. It’s based on the same Cortex A9 used by the main Tegra 3 chip but, crucially, it runs at 500MHz instead of 1.4GHz.

They’re both designed with power saving in mind – in fact, low-power processors are one of the main pillars of ARM’s business – but the fact that these workarounds have to be considered at all merely serve to highlight just how little innovation occurs in the battery market.

It’s clear that lithium-ion power packs just aren’t keeping up with the demands of modern devices, with more powerful processors and bigger screens hampered by batteries that aren’t much bigger or more efficient than those included in phones from a couple of years ago. While components, screens and apps have become more sophisticated and impressive, batteries are stuck in a rut.

It doesn’t seem like the problem will be resolved any time soon, either. Nvidia and ARM might be tacking on chips to handle low-intensity tasks but, as soon as you ramp up four Tegra 3 cores, your phone’s longevity is likely going to plummet, especially if it’s used on devices such as the Samsung Galaxy Note, which has a whopping 5.3in screen.

One of the few drawbacks of modern smartphones is the daily charge: a ritual that sees people leaving phones attached to the mains at night or to their computers at work. Until a newer, more efficient type of battery arrives, this will continue to be the case – even if Nvidia and ARM are doing their best to give outdated lithium-ion hardware plenty of help.

That’s the kind of feature you expect to find on paid-for software such as Photoshop CS5 and Photoshop Elements, but there’s an app that’ll do the same thing for free on Android and iOS devices – TouchRetouch. Here’s how it’s worked its magic on one of my holiday snaps, with a couple of inconveniently-placed tourists removed from in front of this Cretan ruin:

Here’s the after picture, with those tourists in front of the ruin removed:

If you look closely then you’ll see it’s not perfect – the area of modification is just about evident. Still, it’s extremely impressive for a free app. There’s a paid version available, too, for a mere 62p. Upgrading allows you to output at the same image resolution as the original photo – both of the pics in this post are at 648 x 388 – alongside a Clone Stamp tool for advanced retouching.

Here’s another before and after shot, this time from last week’s LITS. It’s members of the PC Pro team recording our live podcast, and I don’t like the look of that lectern to the right of the stage.

See? Gone:

Once again, it’s not perfect – there’s some pixellation where the app has struggled with the glow of the lamp that was behind the lectern. But even so, for a free app – that’s pretty impressive, right?

Fast forward, and I spot my first iPad: on the Tube, its user oblivious to the envious gawping of fellow travellers. For me, it had a similar effect, heralding the arrival of another exciting, innovative type of product.

That’s not the only parallel between netbooks and tablets but, as far as I can see, others aren’t nearly so positive. The netbook’s story has been a sad one: that initial flurry of excitement withered by staid products, precious little evolution and a stagnant market.

Look beneath the iPad – which is still a premium product – and the tablet market could suffer from many of the same problems.

The signs are already there: the market is flooded with a host of shoddy, near-identical products from established tech brands, no-name newcomers and bandwagon-riding outsiders, and innovation is hard to find.

Look under the hood of almost every tablet and you’ll find similar components, with cheaper models boasting obsolete hardware that’s not good enough to run Angry Birds, let alone the more demanding software currently being churned out by eager developers. Uninspiring design dominates the exterior, with cheap iPhone and iPad ripoffs dominating the market.

Almost all of them run Android and, in almost all cases, they disappoint the user with a litany of problems: build quality is often poor, screens are grainy or, even worse, made with unresponsive resistive technology. Plenty don’t have access to the Android Market, instead using an awful third-party store or making do without any legitimate way to install new software.

It’s a familiar story for those who’ve followed the netbook market: shoddy build quality and screens were found across dozens of devices, and a lack of hardware innovation meant they were also of limited use – and soon overshadowed by low-powered laptops.

There’s still hope for tablets. Apple’s forging its own wildly successful path but, away from iOS, only a handful of manufacturers, such as Sony and Samsung, are forging ahead with innovative products. Microsoft, meanwhile, is placing plenty of stock in Windows 8.

Will that be enough to help tablets avoid the same fate of netbooks? It’s still a growing market – tablets have just overtaken netbook sales for the first time – but there’s a big chance it could head in the wrong direction if more people buy, and are disappointed by, sub-standard products. Perhaps Sony exec Mike Abary was right back in 2008: a “race to the bottom” might seem tempting but, in the long run, it does more harm than good.

We tagged along with TDS Racing, sponsored by PC Tools, and later interrogated the team’s technical director Jacques Morello to discover what techy demands are placed on a team at this level of the sport.

It’s certainly not cheap; Morello explained that the telemetry system “costs about €8,000, and analyses the engine, gearbox, driver performance and aerodynamics of the car”. That’s quite a lot of spare change, but it’s at the cheap end of the scale: Morello mentioned that “the systems used for Peugeot or Audi’s Le Mans cars can cost several hundred thousand Euros”.

Still, the kit used by TDS Racing provide a wealth of information – as these screenshots show (click to enlarge). The first provides dozens of measurements and warning lights, from standard fare such as oil and fuel temperatures to more obscure settings, and the second screen goes into even more depth, with graphs to display temperatures, levels and measurements from across the team’s clutch of Meganes.

Telemetry isn’t the only software used by TDS, although the team’s relatively small budget means that Morello sometimes has to improvise. “I use a self-made Excel spreadsheet to plan and evaluate race strategy. Lap times and fuel consumption information is fed into the spreadsheet, and it then calculates the number of pit stops and the number of laps in a stint”.

Morello’s spreadsheet doesn’t just do simple calculations. “The effects of the safety car” can be factored into the equation, and Morello has also made sure that weather conditions are taken into account – handy for planning the rest of the race while it’s happening, as “everything can be modified in real-time”.

Elsewhere, commercial software comes into play, with Morello confirming that “for lap simulation we use Bosch LapSim, and we use Magneti Marelli Wintax4 for data analysis”. Neither of these packages come cheap, but it’s not worth skimping on packages like this, with Morello opining that “preparation is 90% of the job, and 90% of the result.”

LapSim offers a huge wealth of options for race simulation, from camber, aerodynamic and tyre adjustments to hundreds of gearbox, weight balance and suspension settings – ideal when you’re racing on a variety of different European circuits. The cost? Up to €8,730.

Wintax4, meanwhile, also costs a pretty penny, with different versions of the software costing anywhere from €649 to €19,800. It’s used by the team for data analysis, and it’s a vital part of TDS Racing’s ongoing success.

The cars themselves are built from custom-made carbon fibre and kevlar, and high-end technology plays a part here, too. “We design on CAD,” said Morello, “and then send the files to the factory and collect the finished parts.” They’re manufactured using either laser or water cutting machines, and it’s clear which Morello prefers: “water cutting gives us an advantage, with thicker material able to be cut – although it’s a bit more expensive”.

That all goes to make a car that’s fearsomely powerful. The Meganes used by TDS and the rest of the World Series teams delivers 360bhp and weigh only 980kg – less than the average hatchback. As usual, though, they don’t come cheap, and will set you back at least €120,000.

Despite that, we were pleased to hear that more modest bits of technology play their part, too. When asked about the cheapest bit of kit, Morello answered definitively with “my laptop”, and then explained that “it’s one of the most important parts of the team”. Among cars worth €120,000 and software that’ll set you back tens of thousands that’s something, at least, we can all relate to.

Apple and Samsung’s recent spat over patents and design has made plenty of headlines, but a new arrival in the PC Pro Labs has reminded us that some devices take more “inspiration” from the iPhone than others.

Pictured above and below is Apple’s iPhone 4, sat atop of Pierre Cardin’s 7in tablet. Need I say any more.

So, what do you think – will Apple attack this rival with the sort of vigour that’s normally reserved for Samsung, or will the lawyers let this one go?

It’s rare that we see a review system that doesn’t pack an overclocked punch, but the launch of AMD’s Bulldozer-powered FX processors saw the firm use gallons of liquid nitrogen to break the world record for the highest frequency computer processor – previously held by a Celeron – and run its new FX-8150 at a ridiculous 8.429GHz.

That potent fluid is the preserve of the world’s most skilled overclockers and, before its record-breaking attempt, AMD held a test run in front of a small London audience – one of the first times, in fact, that the firm’s overclocking guru Sami Makinen had pushed Bulldozer to its limits.

While Makinen didn’t hit the same heights he managed during the Guinness-monitored attempt, he still took the new chip to a staggering 8GHz clock speed. He tried for 8.2GHz, but the sample he was using begun to crash.

Take a look at our pictures to see exactly what’s involved with extreme overclocking, from putty around the CPU to canisters of potent LN2 – and check out that temperature, too: a chilly -180°C.

The firm’s European product director, Phil Blair, said the Radar was “designed around a social and mobile lifestyle”, and our hands-on time with the device certainly suggested that it’s got enough oomph to make Windows Phone 7’s Mango update feel slick, with no hint of slowdown or juddering as we navigated the various menus and applications.

The Radar feels extremely sturdy as it’s hewn from one piece of metal, and its 137g weight is partnered with a 11mm depth, so it’s far more pocketable than its super-sized stablemate, the HTC Titan. It’s just a shame that, as with other HTC phones, the design doesn’t exactly scream innovation or adventure.

Instead, the Radar bears more than a passing resemblance to the Android-equipped Desire S and, while that’s no bad thing, it’s difficult to shake the feeling that HTC’s handsets are falling behind in the looks department.

The 3.8in touchscreen is a mite smaller than most other smartphones we’re seeing these days, but the 480 x 800 resolution is on a par with most rivals – which means the capacitive panel is extremely sharp.

The screen is responsive, and looked to be serving up vibrant colours, albeit under the dimmed lightning of HTC’s venue. And if you’re not keen on its white finish, don’t worry – it’ll be available in black or grey, too.

The usual 1GHz processor is installed, and it’s partnered with 512MB of RAM alongside all of the usual bells and whistles – GPS, the full range of positional sensors, 802.11n Wi-Fi and a 5-megapixel camera.

The Mango update is the big draw here, and it comes with several interesting enhancements: true multitasking is included, feeds from various social networks are now integrated into the People area, and Windows Phone 7’s familiar tiles now come with more dynamic features, such as notifications of when you receive an instant message on Facebook or the latest weather updates.

Elsewhere, there’s turn-by-turn navigation, QR-code scanning, and support for synchronisation of Office 365 documents – ideal for those who like to work on the move.

So, what do you think? Is this the handset that’ll convince you of Windows Phone 7’s merits, would you rather splash out on a Titan, or are you still wary? You’ve got until October to make your mind up – so let us know in the comments.

Truth be told, the sheer size of the Titan made it feel a little awkward in our hands, but HTC has worked its familiar magic on the hardware.

The device feels rock-solid, it comes with the familiar matte rear and glossy bezel around the screen, and it’s also been made from one machined piece of aluminium. Impressively, it’s also only 9.9mm thick at its widest point.

Under the hood is one of the beefiest specifications we’ve seen on a smartphone. The 1.5GHz processor makes short work of the most demanding applications, and there’s 512MB of RAM and up to 16GB of storage, as well as an 8-megapixel camera.

The result is silky smooth operation, with Windows Phone 7’s distinctive menus, tiles and graphical effects handled without disruption, and apps opening with the minimum of loading times.

One interesting inclusion is DLNA compatibility, which should make it easy to stream media from your phone to a TV, and is a feature that’s only been seen so far on one Windows handset – the LG Optimus 7.

The 4.7in panel should afford plenty of on-screen real estate, but we were a little disappointed to find the Titan only comes with a resolution of 480 x 800. While menus and apps look pin-sharp, it feels like a wasted opportunity; after all, that’s the same number of pixels as the smaller Radar, and even less than the 540 x 960, 4.3in screen fitted to HTC’s current Android flagship, the Sensation.

Still, HTC’s European product director Phil Blair, claimed that Windows Phone 7’s latest update, Mango, was “such a step forward it deserves a new update”, and fans of the OS will have plenty to look forward to when the Titan is unleashed in October.

Perfect fit, or just too big? Let us know what you think of the Titan on the comments below.