Best Entertainment Center/Laptop: Toshiba Satellite P25-S607

You can literally replace your home entertainment center with this 17-inch widescreen laptop. Featuring a TV tuner, personal video recorder and Microsoft’s Media Center Edition of Windows XP, you can record and playback your favorite shows/movies, burn DVDs, listen to your music collection and even play the most demanding 3-D graphics video games on this multitalented machine.

It’s a computer too, stocked to the gills with a Pentium 4 processor with Hyperthreading technology, a 60GB Hard Drive, 512MB of RAM, internal wireless card, great sounding Harmon Kardon speakers, a DVDR/RW drive and plenty of connectors (4 USB 2.0 slots, Fire wire, TV Out). At 8.8 pounds I wouldn’t take the Satellite on too many trips, but for dorm rooms, NYC apartments and vacation property, this home entertainment center is clearly the shape of things to come. Priced around $2,500; www.shoptoshiba.com