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The usual suspects occupy our Top 10 Value PCs chart. A Compaq Deskpro EN, the only new contender this month, fell short due in part to poor performance. Dell systems with essentially unchanged price tags retain the top two spots. But price drops from ABS and NuTrend nudge their systems higher.

Also of Note

In July 2000, the Gateway Select 1000 became the first 1-GHz system on our charts. Due to its relatively high $2899 price, it barely slipped in at number ten in our power PC lineup. This month, every system on the power chart runs at more than a gigahertz, and systems with CPUs clocked at significantly less than a gig are scarce even among our value PCs.

At the same time, prices have tumbled quite a bit: This July's number one value Best Buy, the Pentium III-1000-powered Dell Dimension 4100, costs $1200 less than our first gigahertz system did. Last year, systems with low-cost processors such as the Intel Celeron held a number of spots among our budget PCs; but this year, Celerons are nowhere to be found.

The one new value system we tested this month, Compaq's Deskpro EN Slim Desktop, missed the chart mostly because of its relatively slow Celeron-733 processor. Running Windows 2000, it eked out a PC WorldBench 2000 score of just 140--20 percent pokier than the slowest Windows 2000-equipped system on our value chart, the Duron-850-based Sys TaskMaster 850D. The Deskpro EN we reviewed carried a fairly bare-bones feature set, too: a smallish 20GB hard drive, a garden-variety CD-ROM drive, integrated graphics and video, and no speakers.

We should note that this Deskpro targets corporations that demand relatively simple but highly manageable systems for large-scale deployment, in environments where breakneck speed is not essential. The Deskpro series offers a heap of corporate management features, including an easy-access case, tool-less drive bays, an automatic case lock, and hard-drive-monitoring software. At $1301, the Deskpro EN is not excessively costly, but other managed systems, such as our sixth-ranked Micron ClientPro CN, offer far more power for about the same cost.

Price Check, Please

Micro Express, a vendor whose systems frequently appear on our charts, has been using an arcane pricing system on its Web site. The company often changes the name of systems reviewed by PC World. For example, the $1199 MicroFlex 11A we tested in the March 2001 issue became the $1099 MicroFlex 11B in April and the $999 11C this month. Every time that it changes the name, the company places a revised page on its Web site that you can find only by searching the site.

But until our magazine appears--several weeks after the pricing date listed on our chart--a reader won't know that the name has changed and that the price has dropped. If in the interim you call Micro Express and request the system by its old name, you may be quoted a higher price.

In response to our concerns, Micro Express said that it would change its site so that searches for the older model names will be redirected to the newer ones. At press time, however, searches for the 11B hadn't yet been redirected to the 11C. Our advice: If you're interested in buying a Micro Express system, try entering the name of the base model in the search engine and then working your way up the alphabet. For example, instead of searching for a MicroFlex 11C, try an 11D.

You should also pay careful attention to system specifications. Our initial search for the MicroFlex 11B turned up a system whose components differed from those on the system we tested: The PC listed at the Micro Express site had a slower hard drive, a less-expensive monitor, and no network adapter. Micro Express has since corrected those errors on its site.

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