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.

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.

I’ve become used to Nvidia and AMD rocking up with new graphics cards on a consistently quick schedule: since 2008 and beginning with the GeForce 9000-series, Nvidia has released six generations of GPUs, and AMD has replied with three of its own, starting with the Radeon HD 4000-series.

Both firms put the finishing touches on their current ranges in the spring, and the trail’s gone quiet since. Nvidia has confirmed that it won’t release any new cards before 2012, and AMD hasn’t mentioned any potential release dates for its new Radeon HD 7000-series — presumably taking extra time to further tweak and perfect the new chips.

I can understand why Nvidia and AMD aren’t in any hurry to unveil new silicon — after all, evidence suggests that few games, and fewer gamers, will make use of the levels of power available from new cards: 2007’s Crysis is still one of the most demanding games around and, outside of Battlefield 3, few forthcoming games look like they’ll tax even last year’s graphics cards — after all, most are now ported from consoles.

Take a look at the Steam Hardware Survey from July 2011. The most popular ten graphics cards are, with no exceptions, old: top of the pile is the Nvidia GeForce 9800 GT, and it’s followed up by venerable old warhorses like the GeForce 8800 GT, Radeon HD 4870 and even the GeForce 8600 GT. The most popular current-generation chip, the GeForce GTX 560, is 25th on the list.

To find something truly high-end, keep on travelling down the list — the GTX 570 is the 31st most popular card and is used by a whopping 0.78% of Steam’s users, and the AMD Radeon HD 6950 is favoured by just 0.68%.

That’s the biggest PC gaming platform in the world and proof that, while AMD and Nvidia have spent the fast few years trying to beat each other with benchmarks, most users haven’t taken any notice. Instead, they’re too busy playing games on cards that are older and perfectly capable.

Perhaps the big guns have realised that this pixelated arms race is virtually pointless. Almost all users either aren’t bothered or can’t afford the latest chips, and the lack of big-name PC exclusives means that even a modest card will run rings around the latest games. Enthusiasts might enjoy the yearly releases, but board partners constantly tweak, overclock and improve chips to eke more performance out of older cores — and, if they’d like to run games across several screens, there’s always CrossFireX and SLI.

It looks like we won’t see any major graphics card releases until 2012 but, after several years of frenzied, benchmark-driven battling, I’m happy to wait — and it looks like most users are, too.

They’re from some of the systems not featured in our first post, and come with a range of features designed to whet appetites and empty wallets. All have at least two graphics cards, some have bespoke water-cooling systems, and there’s even one that’s been designed with input from BMW. And that’s before we’ve got to keyboards that have their own cooling fans.

Like what you see? If you do, then you’ll want to pick up issue 204 of PC Pro, which hits the shelves tomorrow with seven of these remarkable systems taking centre stage.

Lining up the systems on our test benches, though, proved just how spectacular these PCs are: SSDs, water-cooling and touchscreen fan controllers on the inside; triple monitors, adjustable mice and £400 speakers on the outside.

As well as benchmarking, I’ve spent plenty of time in the Labs taking pictures of these stunning computers. To get the full low-down on which system takes the Ultimate PC crown, you’ll have to wait until Thursday when PC Pro issue 204 hits the shelves. Until then, take a look at these pictures, try not to drool, and pick out which you’d buy if you had several thousand pounds to spare.

I was pointed in the direction of a blog posting talking about the use of GPU processors to launch brute-force attacks on passwords. GPUs are extremely good at this sort of workload, and the price/performance ratio has changed dramatically over the past few years. What might have seemed impossible even 36 months ago is now perfectly do-able on your desktop computer.

In this report, the author takes a fairly standard Radeon 5770 graphics card (you’ll find it on our A-List under Value Graphics Card), and uses a free tool called ighashgpu to run the brute-force password cracking tools on the GPU. To provide a comparison point with the capabilities of a standard desktop CPU, he uses a tool called “Cain & Abel”.

The results are startling. Working against NTLM login passwords, a password of “fjR8n” can be broken on the CPU in 24 seconds, at a rate of 9.8 million password guesses per second. On the GPU, it takes less than a second at a rate of 3.3 billion passwords per second.

Increase the password to 6 characters (pYDbL6), and the CPU takes 1 hour 30 minutes versus only four seconds on the GPU. Go further to 7 characters (fh0GH5h), and the CPU would grind along for 4 days, versus a frankly worrying 17 minutes 30 seconds for the GPU.

Is an IT manager really going to manage to get the CFO to log in using “fR4; $sYu 29 @QwmQz” without the combination ending up on a Post-it note in his wallet?

Now, I cannot imagine anyone managing to mandate a nine-character, mixed-case, random-character password on an organisation. But if you did, and you weren’t hanging from a tree by the end of the first working day, the CPU would take 43 years versus 48 days for the GPU.

He then went on to add in mixed symbols to create “F6&B is” (there is a space in there). CPU will take 75 days, GPU will take 7 hours.

What does this tell us? well, the stark reality is that even long and complex passwords are now toast. If you think you were being wise by forcing users to have randomisation in their passwords, then think again. It is utterly futile.

Yes, you can force your users to have a 15-character password consisting of random numbers and letters, and throw in punctuation as well. This is great as an idea, but we know that most users think that a password like “Barry1943Manilow” where 1943 was the year he was born, is complex and hard to remember. Is an IT manager really going to manage to get the CFO to log in using “fR4; $sYu 29 @QwmQz” without the combination ending up on a Post-it note in his wallet? Or stuck to the side of the screen? Because anything much less than this is going to be open to attack over the next few years.

A GPU of the type used by this chap is not unusual or high end. It is standard-issue stuff. Indeed, I have just sat through the AMD presentation here at Computex in Taiwan, and they made a big deal about putting GPU power into netbooks offering 500Gflops, without denting its 12-hour battery life. And that’s shipping within months.

All I can say is this: you have been warned. It is time to think long and hard about password security, and how you do your authentication. This has crept up on us in the background, and we really haven’t been paying attention. Nor has Microsoft, frankly, who should be having a whole raft of alternative, hardened solutions in place ready for its business customers to roll out.

What are the solutions? To be honest, I’m not sure. A combination of TPM, biometrics, passwords and maybe something else entirely new will be needed. But it’s clear that a complex password that users will actually accept for day-to-day authentication, and keep secret, might be history.

While some low-end Pavilions will still rock the plastic, the higher-end Pavilions are now finished in what HP describes as a ‘Dark Umber’ aluminium finish. It looks great, and feels solid, too.

In keeping with the reasonable asking prices – just £699 inc VAT for the the dv6-6150ea, and £899 for the dv7-6150ea – both utilise the mid-range Core i5-2410M processor. Switchable graphics chipsets also see AMD’s Radeon HD 6490M buddying up with the integrated Intel HD Graphics 3000.

HP’s Beats Audio now comes as standard on both models, and the speakers have been moved around the chassis, with four on the dv6 and six on the dv7. The latter packs in a miniature ’subwoofer’ driver on its base, too, making for a pair of seriously crisp-sounding laptops.

HP has also responded to the complaints levelled at its previous models, so the touchpad has been redesigned from scratch. Gone are the fiddly integrated buttons, replaced by a wide, responsive touchpad and two discrete buttons – a huge improvement. The Scrabble-tile keyboard, meanwhile, is as good as ever.

A careful scout around the new Pavilion’s ports and connectors sees USB 3 makes its debut. All the networking essentials are still present, with Gigabit Ethernet partnered with 802.11bgn and Bluetooth, while a 1.3 megapixel webcam with low-light mode is enough to keep Skype users happy.

A fingerprint reader comes as standard, and HP’s SimplePass software makes light work of securely managing multiple login details. Assign login details to individual fingers, and a single stroke of the finger is all it takes to fire up the browser and automatically log in to your preferred site.

With both models just hitting the shop shelves as you read this, HP’s promised to send us a pair of review units by the end of this week. Keep an eye on the website, and we’ll bring you the full low-down as soon as we can.

Remember AMD Barcelona? Delayed and disappointing, the architecture behind AMD’s first Phenom chips finally turned up in November 2007, six months behind schedule, with performance that left us “a little underwhelmed” after months of anticipation – and that’s before it was compared against its Intel equivalents.

At the same time, Intel was preparing to release its Wolfdale-based Core 2 Duo processors, which appeared in January 2008 using the more efficient 45nm architecture – a key improvement over AMD’s 65nm chips. The result? Our review concluded that the new Core 2 Duo E8000-series “wipes the floor with the [older] E6000 series” and that Intel’s new processors were an “unqualified success”.

Fast forward three years, and the similarities are startling.

The chips are down

Intel has recently unleashed its stunning Sandy Bridge architecture, which combines improved efficiency with markedly improved performance over its predecessors. The launch might have been marred by the firm’s well-publicised SATA problems, but they’ve now been fixed.

AMD, in the meantime, is floundering: its latest processors are retooled versions of old hardware, and forthcoming Bulldozer chips look like they’ll have an uphill battle, too. AMD is in second place when it comes to implementing 32nm manufacturing, with Bulldozer-based desktop processors not due until later this year and laptop parts only slated to arrive in 2012.

And then there are Bulldozer’s headline features, many of which sound awfully familiar. The chips will be built around individual modules that contain two processing cores with Multi-Threading and Turbo Core technologies, so they’ll be able to address two tasks independently and overclock at will, too – so the firm’s top-end consumer chips will include four modules with eight cores.

Bulldozer might not be as efficient as Intel’s chips, either. AMD’s new chips will have a maximum TDP of 125W, with Intel’s most powerful Sandy Bridge chips coming in with a top TDP of only 95W. That suggests great power efficiency, less heat, and more overclocking headroom.

By the time AMD releases its first Bulldozer-powered processors – rumoured to be in the summer – Intel’s latest Core i7 Extreme chips will also be on the horizon with eight cores and, consequently, 16-thread support as standard, and using a more efficient manufacturing process. They’ll likely be more expensive than AMD’s priciest Bulldozers but, if recent form is to be believed, they’ll also be far quicker, further establishing Intel as the chip of choice for the enthusiast.

The picture isn’t much rosier in AMD’s previous stronghold at the budget end of the market. Fusion is taking aim at Atom but, even though we’ve found it to be a better performer than its rival, we’re not exactly enthused about its prospects. Our review described it as “a year too late” to make a real impact. The desktop chips still aren’t due for several months, and the sheen that surrounded netbooks back in 2007 has faded as CULV laptops, smartphones and tablets – all of which are powered by non-AMD technology – have gained in prominence.

Nvidia fights back

At least AMD has spent the past couple of years delivering market-leading graphics cards, with the firm often finding the perfect balance between price and performance. The tide’s starting to turn here, though, with Nvidia’s GeForce GTX 460 and its successor, the GTX 560 Ti, proving to be better prospects than AMD’s own HD 6950, HD 6970 and HD 6870.

The firms are now trading blows in the high-end space, too, although Nvidia’s likely got the edge here, with its GTX 570 offering the “best compromise between cost and power”. And, while AMD currently holds performance records thanks to the new HD 6990, Nvidia is rumoured to be releasing its own dual-GPU card in the next few weeks – so you’d be wise to hold off if you’re thinking about dropping such a vast sum of cash on a graphics card.

There’s turmoil at the top, too. January saw the departure of CEO Dirk Meyer, allegedly because of the firm’s failure to capitalise on the growth of mobile devices, and other key staff left not long after, with COO Bob Rivet and senior vice president of corporate strategy Marty Seyer both announcing their resignations at the start of February.

In the meantime, AMD has appointed a couple of new faces to its board of directors. Henry Chow and Nicholas M. Donofrio, both veterans of IBM, bring plenty of chip-designing experience to the table – but, crucially, Meyer hasn’t been replaced, with Thomas Seifert manning the fort until a permanent CEO is appointed. That can’t come soon enough – while Meyer has an engineering background and personally led the team that developed the Athlon processor, Seifert is a manager with less technical expertise.

It’s a bleak picture. AMD doesn’t lead the way in any area at the moment, and few signs point to this situation improving. Beating rivals such as Intel and Nvidia might be one step too far for the Californian company right now – by the looks of things, it’ll have a hard enough time trying to keep up.

Several other details can be surmised by looking at these pictures closely, though. It’s brimming with display outputs — one DVI-I port alongside four mini-DisplayPort outputs — and the mammoth cooler extends down the length of the huge PCB and is topped off by a fan in the middle of card.

Of course, the HD 6990 might need that amount of cooling, seeing as it’s rumoured to include two of the firm’s latest GPUs.

That’s all the information we’re allowed to reveal for now, though, so you’ll have to check back soon when the embargo lifts for our full review. In the meantime, we’ll see if we can find a case and power supply that will accommodate this gigantic monster.

To read our full review of the HD 6990, and find out if this £550 card is worth the cash, click here.

The cause, it said, was a problem with the SATA controller which over time, if left unchecked, would “potentially impact the performance or functionality of SATA-linked devices”.

Since Intel’s been proudly boasting that its new chipsets are its first to support SATA 6Gb/s, that’s a bit of an embarrassment – but what’s actually gone wrong?

Leaking currents

Tech site AnandTech has been speaking to Intel, and ironically it seems the problem isn’t to do with the new technology in these chipsets. Instead it’s caused by the older SATA 3Gb/s interface.

Specifically, the problem’s in the interface’s clocking tree, which is the interface that governs data movement. The transistors in this interface are coated with a thin layer of gate oxide, which allows it to be activated with a very low voltage – but, crucially, the transistors actually use a higher voltage than the oxide allows.

The result? Leaking currents which, when given time to build up, can cause the 3Gb/s ports to fail. Luckily, the two SATA 6Gb/s sockets are governed by independent transistors and clocking trees, so they’re not affected.

Intel could have worked around the problem by reducing the voltage to the affected transistors, but that’s just a bodge job – the recall, although inconvenient, allows Intel to introduce fully operational processors, and allows motherboard manufacturers to ensure that the SATA 3Gb/s sockets on its boards won’t suddenly fall over in a couple of years time.

But it’s set to be an expensive process for all involved. Intel has already shipped about 8 million affected chipsets, and motherboard manufacturers will (presumably) have to offer replacement boards to all of their customers.

And those aren’t the only companies affected. Scores of British PC manufacturers have been riding the wave of Sandy Bridge to sell new systems; now they’ll have to handle the wave of returns, too. While many are still deciding how to deal with the fallout, one we’ve spoken to is already offering free replacements to any affected customers. Still, he expects some will want compensation or refunds for their systems – a turn of events that’ll cost his company, he estimates, “tens of thousands” of pounds.

Gate expectations

This isn’t the first time Intel has had problems with leaky gates. As we explored in our feature How Much Smaller can Chips Go, the company encountered similar issues in 2005 when transitioning from its 90nm manufacturing process to a 65nm process. Despite a doubling of the number of transistors in the new chips, there was no effective gain in performance because so much energy was being lost as the ever-thinning oxide layers became less and less efficient at handling current.

Interestingly, Intel knew about the leaky processors long before it became public knowledge; but this new fault has caught motherboard manufacturers and PC builders on the hop. When we contacted them for reactions yesterday afternoon, many of them hadn’t even heard about the recall – and, as yet, we’ve not heard any firm plans from motherboard manufacturers.

It’s an old problem for a new generation of chips, then, and a ghost from a past architecture that’s come back to haunt Intel. No-one knows what’s happening at the moment, but some things are certain – this is an embarrassment for Intel, and it could get very, very expensive.