World Class: Best Products of 1998

What's the best sports team? The one that beats all the others, year after year. The best investment? The one that grows the most over time. How about the best movie? This year it was the one that featured the coolest special effects. (Hint: There was a very large boat in it.)

So what makes a PC product the best in its class? To answer that question, PC World's editors, testers, and contributors examined the entire gamut of products that have appeared in our pages over the past year. The result: our 16th annual World Class Awards, honoring the top hardware, software, and Web products in the PC realm.

In our search for the best, we looked at four factors: performance, value, consistency, and innovation. Some products shone in all four categories. With others, one or two traits were enough to catapult them to the top.

Some companies that made the best products last year have made those products even better. Kudos go to Intuit for its latest versions of Quicken and TurboTax; to Symantec for the newest Norton AntiVirus; and to Dell for its Pentium II line of Dimension PCs. Several other products that led the pack a year ago, like Office 97, are also still the best.

Cool new stuff? Voice recognition is finally worth talking about, thanks to Dragon NaturallySpeaking. Digital cameras are easier to use with the advent of Sony's Mavica MVC-FD7, and PDAs like the REX PC Companion now come in sizes as small as a business card.

But you won't read much here about ADSL, Net PCs, or USB, among other hyped technologies. High-speed Web access, no-fuss computers, and easy-to-install peripherals are still on the horizon. And even though Microsoft still makes the best products in several categories, the past 12 months have not been kind to the software giant, making it our runaway choice for "Loser of the Year."

For now, though, let this article be your guide to the best PC products and companies. In some cases we've named runners-up where we thought more than one product deserved attention. If your opinions differ from ours, let us know. And tell us what you thought of Titanic.