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The Best in Storage, Display, Imaging, and Audio

Storage

Best Hard Drive: Maxtor DiamondMax 60; 800/262-9867, www.maxtor.com

Best CD-RW Drive: Plextor PlexWriter 8/4/32 EIDE; 888/675-3986, www.plextor.com

Best CD-ROM Drive: Toshiba XM-6702B; 949/457-0777, www.sdd.toshiba.com

Best DVD-ROM Drive: CenDyne CDI CD 00042; 714/979-7367, www.cendyne.com

Best Removable-Media Drive: Iomega Zip 250 USB; 800/697-8833, www.iomega.com

The storage game is all about putting up big numbers. The $329 Maxtor DiamondMax 60 IDE hard drive comes in at 60GB, making it 38GB bigger than last year's winner, a 34GB IBM Deskstar. And at a mere $5.50 per GB, this speedy performer is a terrific value to boot.

CD-RW drives--a promising rookie category two years ago--continue to make big strides in price, performance, and popularity this year. The $200 Plextor PlexWriter 8/4/32 EIDE is our top CD-RW choice; it's easy to install and provides a fast 8X write speed--useful when backing up files or burning CDs. Serious digital-music fans will need a fast CD-ROM drive for extracting songs. Our favorite, the $60 Toshiba XM-6702B, is a solid performer.

DVD-ROM drives sped faster this year, but a continued dearth of DVD software means you'll probably use your drive to watch movies or read CD-ROMs. Your best bet is CenDyne's CDI CD 00042 ($147), a competitively priced model with major-league speed and hassle-free installation.

The $180 Iomega Zip 250 USB rounds out our storage team. Bigger and faster than its predecessor (the 100MB Zip drive), it's an impact player on any team.

Display & Imaging

Best Monitor: Sony CPD-E200; 888/476-6972, www.sony.com/displays

Best Flat-Panel Display: Sony SDM-N50; 888/476-6972, www.sony.com/displays

Best Graphics Board: Hercules 3D Prophet II GTS; 877/484-5536, www.hercules.com

Best Scanner: Epson Perfection 1200U; 800/463-7766, www.epson.com

Best Digital Camera: Nikon Coolpix 990; 800/645-6689, www.nikonusa.com

If your current graphics system leaves you squinting like a home-plate umpire, you'll appreciate our picks in display and imaging products. The winners feature state-of-the-art technology, beginning with Sony's CPD-E200--a 17-inch monitor that offers a gratifying combination of price and performance. In addition to its bold graphics quality, the CPD-E200 costs only $350.

Sony also takes center stage in the flat-panel display lineup, with a razor-thin 15-inch LCD, the SDM-N50. At $1499, this sleek but pricey model features built-in sensors that allow the unit to automatically adjust the panel's brightness, depending on the level of ambient light.

To help drive beautiful images on those monitors, get the $349 Hercules 3D Prophet II GTS. Its 32MB arsenal of high-speed DDR SDRAM helps it blaze ahead of the competition in 3D games such as Quake 3 Arena and Flight Simulator 2000.

Meanwhile, if you need to transform your important paper documents and photographs into digital files, give Epson's Perfection 1200U scanner a tryout. This easy-to-use workhorse delivers fast scanning capabilities, sharp color and detail, along with USB connectivity--all for a reasonable price of $249.

Last year, Nikon's Coolpix 950 took the World Class Award among digital cameras. This year, the Nikon Coolpix 990 edges out its predecessor. At $1000, it's not cheap, but this easy-to-use 3-megapixel camera captures some of the sharpest, most vibrant pictures we've seen. Although it's chunkier than the 950, it has USB for fast transfers.

Audio Additions

Best Sound Card: Creative Labs Sound Blaster Live series; 800/998-5227, www.soundblaster.com

Best MP3 Player: Creative Labs Nomad II; 800/998-5227, www.nomadworld.com

Best PC Speakers: Klipsch ProMedia v.2-400 THX; 800/554-5665, www.klipsch.com

Best Voice Recognition Software: Dragon NaturallySpeaking Preferred 4; 800/437-2466, www.dragonsys.com

These days, we talk less to each other and listen more to our computers--but they had better sound good, or we'll tune them out. For a game-winning audio experience, you need a great sound card, and Creative Labs' Sound Blaster Live family of products is a good place to start. Teaming the same basic (but great-sounding) hardware with different software bundles, it fields an array of $99 cards designed for users with different special interests, from gaming to MP3.

MP3 enthusiasts will want to check out the $299 Creative Labs Nomad II. With 64MB of memory and support for both the MP3 and Windows Media audio standards crammed into a 3.2-ounce package, the Nomad II is hard to beat.

Our rookie of the year in PC speakers is the $250 Klipsch ProMedia v.2-400 THX duo. Its THX certification evidences studio-quality sound sharp enough to rival that of many home sound systems.

Computers don't just sound better these days, they've become better listeners, too. Dragon's NaturallySpeaking Preferred 4 ($169) can "learn" your voice in just 5 minutes of coaching. In addition to providing full-blown dictation capability, the software permits Web browsing via voice commands.