Too expensive

For most living room activities such as watching movies and surfing the web, the TP2 is grossly over powered. It's a mighty machine, but media streamers have successfully been freeing music and movies from the office for years, and they don't cost £900. While media PCs are great, you don't need a powerhouse like this to watch and record TV and playback movies.

If you want a Blu-ray device and the ability to listen to music and watch videos from your PC from the comfort of your living room then the obvious answer is to invest in a PlayStation 3 or an Xbox 360.

At £280 a PS3 will save you £615 over the cost of a VAIO TP2, and lets you stream your media from your main PC over your network, surf the net and play Blu-ray discs.

While the TP2 is a work of computing genius, there are few people out there who would spend that much to bring the benefits of a PC into the living room. If you're in the market to replace your main PC with a living room alternative you can't fail with the TP2, otherwise there are plenty of alternatives.