Up Front: The Toughest Product Testers Around

The engineers and lab staff pictured below may look like a nice enough bunch of technicians. But looks can be deceiving. In fact, their job is to be as demanding as possible with the many products that PC World reviews, all so that you'll have an easier time with those you buy.

They're members of the PC World Test Center. Every month they put dozens of PCs, notebooks, printers, monitors, CD-RW drives, digital cameras, scanners, and more through rigorous analysis and testing.

Their aim is to find out which units perform best under real-world conditions. The results they generate form the bedrock of many news stories, reviews, and features in PC World (you can tell which ones by looking for the Test Center logo). They also underlie every listing in our popular Top 100 section.

"For each type of equipment, we devise tests that mirror the demands of a typical business, professional, or home-office environment," says Ulrike Diehlmann, director of the PC World Test Center. "Then we make sure the trials are administered in exactly the same way for each model, to keep things fair."

For example, the testing for this month's home computer roundup (see "Home PCs: All This and XP Too") marks the maiden voyage of PC WorldBench 4, the latest version of the benchmark used to test all PCs and notebooks.

PC WorldBench 4, which was created by Manager of Benchmark Development James Motch, runs each PC through a series of common tasks using 11 popular programs, including Microsoft's Word, Excel, Access, PowerPoint, and Visio; Adobe's Photoshop; Corel's Photo-Paint; Lotus's 1-2-3 and Word Pro; Intuit's Quicken; and Netscape's Communicator. This new version of our benchmark can now test machines running Windows XP, as well as Windows 98 SE, Windows Me, and Windows 2000.

The results can be surprising. When the first Intel Pentium 4 processors came out, for example, the lab discovered that desktops equipped with a 1.5-GHz P4 ran slower on our suite of office apps than did machines with Athlon CPUs from rival AMD running at only 1.2 GHz. But the story didn't end there: When the first Athlon 4's appeared in notebooks earlier this year, they trailed a souped-up version of the old Pentium III chip in our tests.

The lesson here? The performance you'll see in a particular model of PC, printer, or digital camera doesn't always match the specs printed on the box.

That's why the Test Center's job is so important. As Diehlmann says, "If we can help you make just one good product decision this month, or save you from a bad one, then our effort is worth it." Comments? Write to Ulrike at ulrike_diehlmann@pcworld.com or to me at kevin_mckean@pcworld.com.

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Kevin McKean is editorial director.