If you’re looking for ultra-portability then Lenovo’s new IdeaPad U350 (www.lenovo.com/ideapad/uk) is just the ticket. PCFormat readers have the chance to win one of ten U350 laptops worth £499. As well as being light and thin, these great ultra-slim laptops come with 3GB of RAM and a spacious 250GB hard drive, as well as three USB ports, a card reader and Wi-Fi. With the Windows 7 Lenovo Enhanced Experience certification you’ll enjoy fast boot and shutdown, a rich multimedia experience and easy system maintenance. The 13.3-inch HD display is perfect for watching movies, while the Dolby stereo speakers make the most of your media.

The Intel Core 2 CPU (1.4GHz) provides enough power for your basic computing tasks, and is perfect for extending battery life. Battery power is also saved through Lenovo’s Ambient Light Sensor, adjusting screen brightness depending on surroundings. To keep your data safe Lenovo’s laptops also feature a nifty disk analysis system that prevents disaster before it strikes.

To be in with a chance of winning, go to the Future Competitions website, answer the simple question and complete your details.

To enter using your mobile phone, text “LEN3” (without quotes) followed by ‘A’, ‘B’ or ‘C’, then your name and address to ‘87474’. Closing date is 25th December 2009. Terms and conditions here: www.futuretcs.com.

*Please note: the prize pool of ten laptops will be split between PCFormat and its sister computing titles. PCFormat readers have a chance to win one of two Lenovo laptops.

If you were to wander into PCF Towers recently, you’d find the PCF crew lacking heads, just bleeding, messy neckstumps. This is because AMD’s latest graphics card - the HD 5870 - has literally blown our heads off. Like Mike the Headless Chicken, we’re functioning on basic motor-neuron commands at the moment, but we’re still capable of producing the ludicrously excellent magazine that is PC Format.

How did the HD 5870 achieve the collective PCFormat cranial explosion? Its sheer graphical prowess. With its 215 billion transistor count, 1,600 stream shaders, 80 texture units and 32 ROPS, this incredible card has blown everything else out of the water. Add it to any PC and you’ll have a graphics grinding power-house faster than you can say “Crysis at max setttings.”

What’s more the HD 5870 is the first DirectX 11-ready graphics card on the market, which promises proper Tessellation for absurdly realistic graphics. And although we haven’t seen many DX11 games yet, it promises to be superior to the minor disaster/major irrelevance that was DirectX 10.

We have not one, but TWO über-powerful, £300+ HIS Radeon HD 5870s to give away; each with a voucher for Codemaster’s euphoric DX11 rally racer, Colin McRae DiRT 2.

To be in with a chance of winning, email pcfmail-AT-futurenet.co-DOT-uk with the subject line "PCF233 competition", including your name, postal address and the answer to the following question:

What does ROP stand for?
(a) Rachel’s Ornate Poo
(b) Raster Operations Pipeline
(c) Really Overrated Panda

To enter using your mobile phone, test “PCF5870” followed by ‘A’, ‘B’ or ‘C’, then your name and address to ‘87474’. Closing date is 24th January 2010. Terms and conditions here: www.futuretcs.com.

With the long term economic climate still largely uncertain you’d certainly be forgiven for curbing some of your major PC purchases until things improve. A more sensible approach is steady component upgrades to spread the cost and enhance performance over time. And as if by magic we’ve got an incredible component giveaway this issue to fast-track the whole process for you.

The latest Intel i7 870 processor, an Intel Extreme P55 motherboard (DP55KG), and 8GB of 1600MHz Corsair DDR3 memory is all up for grabs right here. Simply put, that’s a dream upgrade bundle, worth over £700, and will transform your rig into a blazing quick gaming system capable of melting faces faster than Raiders of the Lost Ark. We’ve benchmarked the Intel i7 870 processor this issue, so check out our full review on page 30.

Of course a top end processor needs a top end motherboard, and Intel’s flagship Extreme motherboards are designed specifically to cater for the behemoth power of the Core i7, plus plenty of slots and ports to build your top-end system around it. Corsair’s latest memory bundle, reviewed on page 43, has been put together specifically with the new chip’s revamped, on-die, dualchannel memory controller in mind. At 8GB and happily running at 1600MHz, this could well be all the memory you might ever need.

To be in with a chance of winning, email pcfmail-AT-futurenet.co-DOT-uk with the subject line "PCF232 competition", including your name, postal address and the answer to the following question:

What is the Intel codename for the Intel i7 870’s processor architecture?
(a) Lynnfield
(b) Nehalem
(c) Penryn

To enter using your mobile phone text ‘PCFi870’ followed by either ‘A’, ‘B’ or ‘C’ then your name and address to ‘87474’. Closing date is 26th December 2009. Terms and conditions here: www.futuretcs.com

There’s always a sense of ‘it’ll never happen to me’ about the world of antivirus protection, and we’re as guilty of it as anyone. It’s tough to justify forking out nigh-on £50 for that bit of extra protection over the free-to-use antivirus software, but it can make all the difference.

Unfortunately though it is important. We’re not going to suggest that if you don’t spend the money all your bank accounts will be picked up by Al Qaeda, but the paid for protection isn’t all about more security. This gaming edition of Symantec’s Norton Antivirus suite delivers up-to-the-minute protection with tiny updates every five to fifteen minutes, picks up viruses, rootkits and spyware, and is thoroughly lightweight. All the sort of things you’d expect from high-end antivirus software. Its key feature though is the fact that you can select a specific gaming mode that will either operate whenever the machine goes into fullscreen mode or at the user’s request and suspends all updates, alerts and other background activity for the period that you’re in-game. Most of us have been guilty of turning off our virus protection to get a better game experience, or to avoid being brought back to the desktop. This Gaming Edition though puts pay to all that reckless gaming and gives you the protection you need.

We’ve got 25 copies of the 2009 edition to give away to you, our lovely readers, and each copy will allow you to install onto two other PCs besides your main rig.

To be in with a chance of picking up your copy, email pcfmail-AT-futurenet.co-DOT-uk with the subject line "PCF230 competition", including your name, postal address and the answer to the following question:

Which country produced the Norton motorbike?
(a) China
(b) Japan
(c) Britain

To enter using your mobile phone text ‘PCFNorton’ followed by either ‘A’, ‘B’ or ‘C’ then your name and address to ‘87474’. Closing date is 28th September 2009. Terms and conditions here: www.futuretcs.com

Nothing says ‘we love you’ like a year’s worth of free, high-speed broadband, and to prove just how much we love you that’s exactly what we’ve got for one lucky reader. We’ve teamed up with BT to help you thrive, with a full twelve months of free BT Business Total Broadband.

We’re all about connectivity here and this top-of-the- BT-line package is too, not only keeping you in touch at home with a wireless router, but on the move too with a 3G and WiFi dongle thrown in for good measure too. No more being chained to your desk at home or in the office, you are now free to roam with your laptop and stay online.

BT Business is giving small businesses a boost in these troubling times with the introduction of savings across its mobile and business broadband packages with the BT Business Value Pack worth up to £700 gratis. Find out more at www.thrivewithbt.com.

To enter, email pcfmail-AT-futurenet.co-DOT-uk with the subject line "PCF228 competition", including your name, postal address and the answer to the following question:

Which dragon from the TV program Dragons’ Den recently starred with the Gremlins in a BT Business advert?
(a) Deborah Meadon
(b) Duncan Bannatyne
(c) Peter Jones

To enter using your mobile phone text ‘PCFBT’ followed by either ‘A’, ‘B’ or ‘C’ then your name and address to ‘87474’.

Closing date is 9th July 2009. Terms and conditions here: www.futuretcs.com