What's New in the Top 100

For this month's reviews of new systems, click the links below.

• Top 20 Power Desktops
  
  
• Top 20 Budget Desktops
  
  
• Top 10 Notebook PCs
  
  
• Top 10 Home PCs
  
  

It's not every month we showcase top-notch values for businesses on both ends of the price spectrum. PCs on our Top 20 charts, with Pentium III-450 and -500 processors, just got more affordable. You'll find PIII-450 PCs for less than $2000, and a handful of PIII-500s for just a few hundred dollars more. On the budget side, many robust desktops cost less than $1500, while sub-$2000 notebooks from top-name vendors are starting to make a serious pitch for your business.

What's pushing prices down? At the high end, companies are making room for systems with the Pentium III-550 processor, which should debut in our August Top 20. According to Ken Bosley, North American product manager for Hewlett-Packard's Vectra line, "The Pentium III-550 will come in at a slight price premium. By August the price points of PIII-500 and PIII-450 PCs will fall, and low-end processors like the PII-400 will start to drop out of the market."

The Pentium III-550 is expected to offer an incremental speed increase over the PIII-500 (see Top of the News). What does that mean for business buyers? According to Mario Morales, International Data Corporation's director of semiconductor research, "Processors, and even some components, have exceeded the applications typically used in business. You don't need that much power for today's productivity applications, with the exception of speech recognition and video conferencing." In other words, businesses that don't require capabilities beyond the usual range--from word processing to Web surfing--can keep PC costs down by opting for bargain-basement PII-450 machines or lower-priced PIII-500 systems.

Where the Buys Are

The best deals on the power chart this month are top-brand PCs powered by Intel's Pentium III-450 processor. The midchart Micron Millennia Max 450, for example, includes a 6X DVD-ROM drive and a hardware decoder, but costs just $1999. At number 20, Hewlett-Packard's Vectra VLi8 SFF boasts the lowest price on the power chart: $1834. That's an especially low price for a network-managed PC. It's not very expandable, but it includes perks like an enhanced keyboard and a quiet-running, compact chassis.

Of the five new systems on the power chart, three sport the Pentium III-500. The top-rated of these, IDot.com's 500 P3BX, provides outstanding performance, excellent multimedia features and, at $2298, costs $300 less than the average machine on this month's power chart.

Toshiba's $2133 Equium 7100M, another new PIII-500 power system, costs $500 less than similarly configured peers. Its PC WorldBench score of 254 (running Windows NT) makes it the slowest PIII-500 we've reviewed, but it compensates for this shortcoming with a low price and nice design extras like an easy-open case.

Business-Savvy Budget

As they did last month, PCs based on Intel's Celeron CPU take three of the top five spots on the budget chart. In addition, two new Celeron-433s make the Top 20: Dell's $1420 Dimension V433c--a Best Buy--and the $1450 Compaq Prosignia Desktop 310, at number 20. Both have enough speed and features to please small or medium-size companies.

But if $1500 is still more than you're willing to shell out for a new system, perhaps you should consider something in the sub-$1000 range. We rounded up 21 such computers for the review "The Best PCs for Under $1000: How Low Can They Go?" and were pleasantly surprised to find some great values.

Notebook Deals

As on the budget desktops chart, Celeron-based systems fare well on this month's budget notebook list. We also had our first look at two business-friendly sub-$2000 Celeron-333 and -300 portables: HP's $1899 OmniBook XE2 and Compaq's $1799 Armada 1500c, respectively. Thanks in part to Intel's latest Celeron processor, the OmniBook offers a price and performance that beats those of some of its Pentium II-300­based competitors. (Check out this month's Top 10 Notebook PCs for the exact numbers.)