And for the video mavens: what could possibly pair better with your new camcorder or cell phone's HD content than a quad-core Sandy Bridge processor with Intel's Quick Sync encoding technology, for ?

You might not be able to carry your desktop around, but with boasting such impressive performance, chances are it's your laptop that's starting to look a little bulky.

Desktops aren't dead. In fact, I wouldn't even say they're threatened, for much the same reason that gas-guzzling pickup trucks and breakneck-pace motorcycles exist in a world of fuel-sipping sedans.

Whether it's gaming, number-crunching, or content-creation and consumption, desktops are poised to remain at the forefront of innovation, if only for the fact that the latest, most powerful hardware generally needs to draw power and expel heat -- and lots of it.