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Top 15 Home PCs

Price cuts move PCs from the power slot down to the midrange and budget sectors.

By null, PCW Print   

Complete Coverage

A wave of new power home PCs--most of them with Pentium 4 processors--has created a trickle-down effect, as systems with formerly top-tier processors cut their prices and move headlong into the midrange and budget sectors.

Dell's Dimension 4100/1GHz enters the midrange chart as a new Best Buy. Its $1828 price puts the 1-GHz unit just $75 above last month's Dimension 4100/PIII-933. The unit's unusual combo DVD/CD-RW drive will please users who want to conserve space, though some will find it awkward having only one drive to read and write data. But with four open bays, there's plenty of room for more hardware.

At the bottom of the midrange section is Hewlett-Packard's new $1800 Pavilion 9720. Geared for small-business users, this package includes Microsoft 2000 Small Business Edition and a network card, plus a whopping 60GB hard drive.

This month's budget chart lineup also has some changes. HP's $999 XT846 package (reviewed in last month's New Products) includes Intel's new Celeron-800 processor, a CD-RW drive, and a network card, but it doesn't offer much in the way of speed, posting a PC WorldBench score of just 116. The retirement of IBM's NetVista A20i and Tiny Computer's Value 900A allows for the return of the Kaypro 4110, which appears at the bottom of the budget chart. This Kaypro, another 800-MHz unit, has speed to spare.

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