Everyone wants a Network Attached Storage (NAS) box - at least, everyone who wants somewhere to store swelling amounts of data. Whether you're a huge megacorp looking for an accessible and secure storage device, or you're a home user who needs something to serve your music and movies, NAS boxes are the solution. Now, you could go out and buy a special NAS box for oodles of cash, or you could covert an existing machine to do the job. And what better machine than something small, quiet and friendly with your electricity bill? Our friends at PC Plus show you how to turn your old netbook into a NAS device using the OS most perfectly suited to the job, Linux.

In our previous two tutorials (see here and here), we created a Simon-type game using the Arduino, a hardware platform for simple, and not so simple, electronics projects.

We placed three buttons and three LEDs on to something called a breadboard, and wrote a small program that would send a random sequence to the LEDs, which the player would then need to replicate by pressing the buttons in the same order. Each time you got the sequence correct, the sequence would be extended by one and repeated. The further into the random sequence you got, the higher you scored.

In this, part three, we're going to build on what we already created and add another important feature - sound! So, get the hardware out, make some coffee, and prepare for some hardware hacking fun...

Is it possible to cram a whole Linux server into something the size of a plug? Apparently it is - Marvell has combined gigabit Ethernet, flash storage and an ARM CPU with a full install of Ubuntu to produce the tiniest Linux server we've seen for some time. Can you resist the power of your geek hardware lust? If not, don't read on...

While Linux is rock-solid reliable in day-to-day usage, when you start poking around at the command line (especially as root) then things can get a bit hairy. Equally, if you're living life on the razor's edge, installing new kernels and boot scripts every other day, there's a chance you can make your system unbootable. However, Live CDs come to the rescue: PC Plus shows you how to fix drive problems using Linux, whether you need to restore the bootloader, fix the partition table or back up your data.

Netbooks may be on the cheaper side of computing, but as we're all watching our pennies now, making the right choice is essential. We've brought together all the netbooks we could get hold of - most of which are bundled with Linux - for a comprehensive test. We're looking at:

• Performance All but one of the netbooks are based on the Intel Atom 1.6GHz CPU and 945GME graphics chip. But other components come into play, especially the storage and the wireless reception strength, so we're putting particular focus on these aspects.
• Usability The most important aspect of a netbook. It doesn't matter if it looks wonderful if the keyboard is far too cramped, or the trackpad is rubbish.
• Build quality You shouldn't need to baby your netbook. You want to chuck it in your bag, use it everywhere and not worry about it taking a bump or two.

To find out how each of our eight netbooks fared, read on!

Here's a device that started out as a firewall and ended up as a powerful embedded development platform. It's based around an ARM CPU and includes an SDK to let you develop your own tools.

• Supplier: Yoggie Security Systems
• Web: www.yoggie.com
• Price: $79

An attractive price, but how good is it? Read on for our verdict...

Our GP2X Wiz finally arrived and, although we've literally only had this Linux-powered handheld in our grubby mitts for an hour, we wanted to give you our first impressions. You may recall the original GP2X, a Korean-manufactured portable media player and retro gaming box - well, the GP2X Wiz bumps it up a few notches in power and design.

In part 1 of our Arduino tutorial seres we covered the basics of how the Arduino works, and we're going to use that knowledge in a hands-on project and see how this open-source hardware programming environment works when we're actually trying to get something done with it.

After this, you'll have more than enough information to be able to tackle your own projects with confidence - we're going to build on the existing foundations to work on an entire project using nothing but cheap components and open source.

Here's a nice stat. According to the Microsoft Windows Team Blog, Windows market share in the blossoming netbook market has reached a whopping 96% as of February this year. "Not only are people overwhelmingly buying Windows, but those that try Linux are often returning it", says the blog, claiming that "customer confusion" has led the Carphone Warehouse, a major UK mobile phone (and now netbook) retailer, to drop Linux.

Arduino is cool. It's cool because it's a tiny device - about three inches by two inches - that comes with a USB port and a programmable chip. It's cool because you can program it using a very simple programming language known as Wiring.

But most of all, it's cool because the entire reference design for the hardware is available under a Creative Commons licence, so you're free to build your own if you want to. However, that's probably a little extreme for most people, which is why you can also buy pre-built Arduino boards that are ready for action and available at very low prices.

In this tutorial, the first part of a mini-series, you'll learn all you need to get started with Arduino hardware hacking...