A big day for us here at PC World Towers as the 500,000th reader post was left on our Press F1 help forum. That's one heck of a lot of messages from readers helping other readers (with occassional diversions into politics, arguments over the best sci-fi film of all time and so fourth).

For helping make Press F1 one of the fastest-response, best-populated PC help forums on the planet, you are all winners. But in another, more real way, their are three winners in our competition to mark the half-millionth post. They are, as selected by PC World editorial staff:

Most helpful users of all time:
F1 heroes JenC and Chilling_Silence, who both collect a Crumpler Backpack, an 8GB MP3 Sansa player from Sandisk, and a 4GB Ducati Flash Drive. While so many readers have given so much, our super mods have been in a class of their own, not only for helping with questions (and, um, our clock) but keeping things running smoothly on the admin front, and helping to create F1's unique sense of community - Christmas Day included. Thanks on behalf of everybody.

Most helpful new user
The super-humanly (or super-mousingly) prolific Speedy Gonzales, who gets a Crumpler bag, a 2GB Sandisk Sansa MP3 player and a 4GB Ducati Flash Drive. I know that Speedy didn't join yesterday, but in the context of a 15-year-old forum, Mr Gonzales is a relative toddler.

Being a self-aware, self-organising beast, the Press F1 community naturally also awarded its own popular-vote accolade for the most-helpful user of the year, in typically racaus and entertaining fashion. The gong went to wainuitech, who received a Microsoft Live Chat headset plus a selection of games.