PC World Reviews: Reinvented With Powerful New Tools

PC World's product reviews and charts have undergone a major makeover.

The test reports and specs are deeper, giving you more of the information you need for smart buying decisions. The new PC World Rating System provides finer details that allow you to distinguish the differences between products. The ratings have also become dynamic and responsive to changes in the marketplace--rising or falling as new technologies appear, features change, and prices fluctuate.

Most important, we've built an exciting new set of tools that you can use to customize charts, helping you come to your own conclusions about which products best suit you.

Top Ranked Charts

For years, PC World has been among the very few publications willing to test and review products as a group and then confidently pick the very best of breed. And we'll continue to do so with our reinvented and reformatted Top Ranked product charts and product pages.

Now, instead of a sampling of performance test results and specifications, you'll find complete details of the testing conducted by the PC World Test Center, as well as all of a product's relevant features, weaknesses, and strengths. For a look at our new format, check out these charts:

• Top 5 Power Notebooks
• Top 5 All-Purpose Notebooks
• Top 10 Point-and-Shoot Cameras
• Top 5 Internal Hard Drives
• Top 5 External Hard Drives
• Media Center PCs
• Top 5 Wide-Screen LCD Monitors

Putting Power in Your Hands

While our expert reviewers and the PC World Test Center go to great lengths to find, test, and rate the most important products on the market, only you can know exactly which products meet your personal and professional needs.

Now you can control which products make the top of your personal list through our newest offering, PC World's Complete Product Listings.

Currently in beta testing, the product reviews you'll find in our Complete Product Listings look very much like those in our amazingly popular Top Ranked product charts. For example, all of the reviews in our listings contain our new PC World Ratings, highly detailed test reports, specifications, and photos.

But look closer.

On the left side of the page, you'll find a new set of tools that allow you to sort and filter our reviews to taste. Even better, unlike our Top Ranked charts, which are a snapshot of the best of today's top products, our Complete Product Listings contain all the products we've recently reviewed, including those that are no longer on our most current Top Ranked chart.

Like the ratings in our Top Ranked charts, those in our Complete Product Listings are dynamic. If a product is still under active consideration for a place on our Top Ranked charts, its rating can change as new technologies supersede older ones, features evolve, and prices move up or down. Once a product ceases to be actively considered for a position on a Top Ranked chart, its rating becomes frozen at its last value.

Want to find the lowest price for a desktop PC? Interested in only the highest-rated products, regardless of their age? Simply use the Sort Products By tool to sort by rating or price. Interested in one particular manufacturer? Use our Filter Results tool, click on the manufacturer drop-down list, make a choice, and click the Update button.

You can see our new Complete Product Listings here:

• Digital Cameras
• Desktop PCs
• Hard Drives
• Monitors
• Notebooks
• Optical Drives
• Printers

We think you'll enjoy this new way of finding product reviews, test reports, photos, and product ratings--but, of course, you will be the ultimate judge.

Let me know what you think by dropping me a line.