Premio Apollo BX 500

Premio Apollo BX 500

SUMMARY

PRO: Great performance, good support quality CON: Priciest computer on our chart, support hours too short, limited multimedia

If you want a fast, well-appointed PC for your home office, you will like Premio's new midsize tower. But brace yourself for sticker shock: The $2900 Apollo BX 500 costs $243 more than the average chartmaking machine this month. That demerit, compounded by thin multimedia and truncated support hours (the shortest for any ranked system), left this PC lower on the chart than its power numbers alone would warrant.

The Apollo scored 233 in our PC WorldBench tests--just a few points shy of the top Windows 98 systems we've tested and indistinguishable from them in day-to-day use. The 14.4GB hard drive can accommodate months or years of most users' files, and the 19-inch Princeton EO900 monitor displays crisp images, especially in Excel. The monitor's easy-to-use controls permit numerous adjustments, including zooming in and out of screen images. The keyboard is quiet and comfortable.

Premio also scores points for design and documentation. The PC's case lifts off in seconds to reveal a tidy interior with unfettered access to open slots and bays. The profusely illustrated manuals are easy to follow. And Premio goes the extra mile on productivity software, bundling Microsoft Office Professional (which, unlike the Small Business Edition that ships with most competing PIII-500 systems, includes the popular Access database program). But if you want to use your PC for fun as well as work, we advise you to pass on the Apollo. Its accompanying Premio 636A speakers yield tinny, flat sound, and you get a 14X­32X CD-ROM drive instead of a DVD-ROM drive.

Premio backs its systems with a generous three-year parts and labor warranty. Tech-support reps got on the line with us in less than a minute during our anonymous calls and answered almost all of our questions accurately. But Premio's reps are available only 9 hours per weekday--easily the least-generous support hours of any PC maker on the chart.