If you're in the market for a tool for capturing audio and moderately editing the results, look no further than WireTap Studio, Ambrosia Software's intuitive audio app.

It’s rare that a product—even a very good one—balances function, innovation, and performance, but that’s what Hewlett-Packard has done with the Designjet Z3100 Photo Printer.
Best Current Price: $3650.50 (via MacBuy)

After a long development process fraught with hurdles, Colin McRae Rally finally arrives on the Mac. And it takes the rally racing genre to new heights, despite an unsatisfactory online mode.

The imagePROGRAF6100 should put an end to talk that Canon can’t compete in the professional photo printer market. With a better ink formulation and an improved print head, this 12-ink printer produces excellent images on both glossy and fine-art media.

The Selphy CP740 prints decent 4-by-6 inch photos, but overall its irksome limitations outweigh its benefits.
Best Current Price: $79.95 (via MacBuy)

The ViewSonic VA2026w isn’t a bad display, but other models in its category offer better viewing angles and lower price tags.
Best Current Price: $219.00 (via MacBuy)

If you’re looking for a wide-screen LCD display, but don’t want to spend an arm and a leg, the NEC 205WXM should be at the top of your list.
Best Current Price: $309.99 (via MacBuy)

The Dell E207WFP is a good, bare-bones, 20-inch wide-screen display. And though it’s short on extra features, it performed well in our tests against other displays in its class. You should consider it if you’re looking for an inexpensive wide-screen monitor.
Best Current Price: $243.00 (via MacBuy)

The BenQ FP202W V3 is a decent, affordable, 20-inch wide-screen LCD. But with its oversharpened text, limited viewing angle, and frustrating-to-use on-screen menu system, you’d be better off with the Dell E207WFP, which costs less and looks better.
Best Current Price: $187.31 (via MacBuy)

Though the mini320’s prints are attractive and the scroll-wheel interface is fun to use, the printer isn’t a very wise investment given its increased cost per print. Pitted against the PictureMate Zoom, which prints superior photos at faster speeds for a cheaper price per print, the mini320 almost doesn’t stand a chance.
Best Current Price: $116.99 (via MacBuy)

The Envision is a fine, inexpensive, 20-inch wide-screen LCD. Colors looked better than average right out of the box, but onscreen text was a bit fuzzy. If you’re in the market for an affordable LCD, the Dell E207WFP costs just a few dollars more and performed better in our tests.
Best Current Price: $198.54 (via MacBuy)

The Samsung SyncMaster 206BW is a very good wide-screen desktop display. It is competitively priced and, once calibrated, performed very well in our text and color tests. But, of course, you get what you pay for.
Best Current Price: $210.96 (via MacBuy)

Hewlett-Packard's w2007 20-inch display is a good all-around wide-screen monitor with interesting features like built-in speakers and a shiny, high-gloss screen.
Best Current Price: $260.00 (via MacBuy)

Attractive, easy-to-use, and innovative, the A626 should make a good travel partner for scrapbookers and hobbyists. The ability to print up to 4-by-12-inch panoramas is a very useful option, but the A626’s small paper capacity is a strange, questionable limitation.
Best Current Price: $140.89 (via MacBuy)

If you bought a Mac laptop recently, this latest MacBook upgrade will cause no reason for despair. However, if you’ve been awaiting the most optimal time to refresh an iBook or even an older PowerBook G4, this might be it.

The name looks like a typographical error -- LoSt-CaUzE Gaming Headphones -- but these noise-canceling headphones work great and cost less than many competitors. Games may be frustrated by the lack of a microphone, however.

Logic Studio is now even more effective at providing an extensive tool kit and then getting out of your creative way. There are still some dated MIDI editing tools, and MainStage’s lack of integration with Logic or ReWire restricts its use to some users. But ultimately, having more isn’t nearly as important as being more playable, and that’s what Logic 8 does most successfully.

MYOB’s FirstEdge 3 is a best-of-class small-business accounting application that gives you excellent features at a great price. While form customization can be frustrating, it’s unlikely to interfere with how well FirstEdge handles your business finances.

NovaMind Pro 4 is a powerful program designed for experienced mind-mappers. If you’re just getting into this method of organizing ideas, you may find the graphics options overwhelming. But the ability to create templates is a boon for those who use mind maps regularly.

If you are a professional photographer or serious amateur looking to reproduce your work at large sizes and with extremely high quality, the Epson Stylus Pro 3800 Standard Model is a great printer.
Best Current Price: $1069.99 (via MacBuy)

This casual game blends delightfully challenging elements of a business tycoon game with an arcade-style offering.

Vudu is an impressive device that brings instant movie entertainment to your living room. Fun, easy to use, and offering great video and sound quality, Vudu has the potential to become a revolutionary device in the digital-movie era.

Mac OS X Leopard is a sweeping update with so many new features that it's hard to keep them all in perspective. What is clear, however, is that it's a solid upgrade.

It may take a while to get accustomed to using a tablet; but if you stick with it, you’ll find that the Bamboo offers a natural approach to drawing, photo retouching, handwriting, and navigating that boosts comfort, creativity, and efficiency.
Best Current Price: $84.99 (via MacBuy)

Fluid Mask 3.0.2 is a very effective tool for separating objects from their backgrounds. It offers a variety of useful features for tackling almost any difficult image, from wispy hair to complex foliage. Online video tutorials and live training sessions help ease the learning curve.

The HP Photosmart A826 is a great choice for beginning photographers who want to print their digital photos as easily as possible. The printer’s case design could use some improvement for greater ease of handling, and dark prints appear a little dull; but overall, the A826 is an attractive, fun device.
Best Current Price: $233.76 (via MacBuy)

With some retailers selling the Casio Exilim EX-V7 at heavy discounts, you can get a lot of camera for your money. Just don't expect to develop a passionate attachment to it.

If you can live with the Samsung NV11's portability constraints, it's an excellent choice for an all-around camera that's fun to use and equally accommodating of beginners and advanced shutterbugs.
Best Current Price: $269.00 (via MacBuy)

The Panasonic DMC-FX100K is streamlined enough not to baffle novice users, but even seasoned shutterbugs ought to consider this is as a backup to their SLR or DSLR.
Best Current Price: $322.95 (via MacBuy)

If you plan to do most of your shooting on outdoor adventures and don’t want to schlep around high-end gear, the Olympus Stylus 770 SW will produce adequate snapshots and withstand all kinds of abuse. But if thrill-seeking is only a minor part of your lifestyle, you may want to buy a more capable point-and-shoot camera.
Best Current Price: $329.99 (via MacBuy)

If they had been more thoughtfully implemented, the Nikon Coolpix S50c’s Wi-Fi features might have been enough to compensate for its undistinguished image quality and ease of use. As it is, you’re probably better off choosing a more capable shooter.
Best Current Price: $227.99 (via MacBuy)

If you’re the least bit creative, Painter Essentials 4 could be the most fun you’ve had in front of a computer in years (though you’ll want to spring for a graphics tablet). It’s affordable and the new interface makes it an absolute joy to use.

The PictureMate Zoom PM 290’s improvements over its predecessor are subtle but significant. Faster, more affordable, and problem-free, the Zoom is the best portable photo printer you can currently buy, if you don’t mind its print-size limitation.

If style is a prime consideration and you plan to let the camera do all the exposure and composition work, the Sony Cyber-shot DSC-T100 is a capable enough shooter in a slick package. Those who care more about what’s under the hood, however, can find a lot more camera for the money.

Already, the release of Fusion has inspired an incremental upgrade in Parallels so that its Coherence feature more closely matches what you get with Unity—and there’s the upcoming Fusion 1.1 that will add better 3-D graphics support, improvements in Unity mode, support for the Eject key, and a host of other improvements.

This turn-based strategy game shipped earlier this year, but it took the version 1.5 release to iron out some problems. The result is a much more robust game that moves the legendary Heroes of Might & Magic series in incremental new directions.

Despite Canon’s ambition to combine the best of two worlds, the PowerShot TX1 has few compelling advantages as a camcorder or a still camera. And its high price and awkward configuration for still photography are serious drawbacks.
Best Current Price: $409.95 (via MacBuy)

If you’re an artist, using Painter X is natural and intuitive. For the aspiring artist, Painter is a great way to learn—the digital advantage being that every canvas, brush, and tube of paint is free.

Snap Art offers a painless way for consumers and professionals to create natural-media art from photographs. Its ease of use and variety of customizable effects make it an efficient alternative to Photoshop’s native brushes and actions.

At $499, the Lexmark X500n is a bargain for a device of its kind. Although it’s slow with scanning and its copies lack some detail, this MPF is fast, easy to use, and a strong overall performer.