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SUMMARY

Sys TaskMaster Z-366C PRO: Fast, great price CON: No software, lackluster support quality

Put the TaskMaster Z-366C on your short list of candidates if you want a speedy small-business computer at an extremely low price. A recent $100 reduction drops the TaskMaster Z-366C's price to $1299, making this the fastest sub-$1300 Windows 98 computer we've charted. In fact, most people would be unable to detect any performance difference between this Celeron-366­based midsize tower and the PII-400 PCs on the chart, which cost, on average, several hundred dollars more. On the other hand, the $1299 price doesn't include any applications software, such as Microsoft Office.

Even so, we found the Z-366C an impressive deal. It's not lavishly appointed, but you get everything you need for basic business tasks, including a 6.4GB hard drive, a V.90 56-kbps modem, a 14X­32X CD-ROM drive, and a 17-inch monitor. While colors appeared a bit washed out on our display, the video system comes with 16MB of video memory--twice what you usually find on systems in this price range--providing some real oomph for 3D tasks. The bundled Altec Lansing ACS295 speakers and subwoofer deliver full, rich audio. To get inside the TaskMaster, you'll need a screwdriver to remove two small screws; but once they're out of the way, the case slides off smoothly and quickly to reveal a tidy interior.

Our biggest beef: the paucity of good technical assistance. The bundled manuals aren't much help, especially for people new to PCs, so you may need to turn to the company's phone-based support. But though Sys offers users nonstop toll-free support and free on-site service for the first year, reps are available only 9 hours per day after that. On top of that, Sys's support quality rates as only fair. In our anonymous calls to the service department, we had to leave messages for callbacks about half the time. When we spoke to reps, they fielded the easy questions quite well but tended to pass the buck on the tougher questions, asserting that the problems were "software issues."