• PC World
• » Software
• » Operating Systems

While 2001 hasn't been the best year for PC vendors, it's been great for buyers. Faced with a glut of super-powerful systems and soft demand, PC makers are dropping prices, throwing in extras, and doing whatever they can to make you an offer you can't refuse. Many of the systems we looked at are bundled with extra goodies, including printers, Web cams, and high-end sound systems. And they all come with Microsoft's new operating system, Windows XP, which vendors hope will be the killer app that motivates people to replace their old computers. See last month's cover story " Windows XP Inside and Out" for more about this OS.

To check out the new offerings in time for the gift-giving season, we gathered as many XP-equipped home PCs as we could find--most of them arriving at the PC World Test Center just days after Microsoft released the operating system to manufacturers. These early machines ran quite well, though not without a few glitches. For example, the driver that Microsoft ships for several NVidia-based graphics cards caused images in our Quake III game test to break down occasionally into psychedelic-colored polygons. It's a neat effect, but clearly not what vendors intended. Such hiccups are bound to happen with a new OS, and we expect to see graphics quality improve in coming months as vendors install updated drivers.

In total, we evaluated 7 power and 11 value systems for speed, component quality, and features--keeping in mind the inevitable relationship between performance and cost. We found a lot to like, with power to spare. Most big-name home PC makers are represented, though a few, such as MicronPC and Sony, didn't have PCs ready in time for our story. Others, like Compaq and HP, had just one model available. Watch for reviews of more systems in future Top 15 Home PCs charts.

We haven't ranked our choices for this review--we're reserving judgment until we see more XP-equipped machines. But we did consider factors such as speed, price, monitor, features, and sound quality in picking Best Buys from the current field. On the power side, Dell's Dimension 8200 impressed us most with its sexy design, brilliant 19-inch monitor, and thundering Altec Lansing ADA-995 sound system. Among units in our value set, NuTrend's Athlon Mega 3 won our admiration by offering high speed and nice extras, including an LCD monitor and a printer.

Windows XP isn't the only new item to report here: This is the first review to feature our new benchmark, PC WorldBench 4. Note that scores from PC WorldBench 4 and its predecessor, PC WorldBench 2000, are not comparable. Our Test Center updated PC WorldBench 4's applications and now uses a baseline system that's more comparable to current PCs. Our new baseline--a Gateway Select 1200 running Windows 2000 with a 1.2-GHz Athlon processor, 128MB of PC-133 SDRAM, and a 20GB hard drive--scores 100 points. All other system scores represent a percentage difference from the baseline score. For example, a score of 110 is 10 percent higher than our baseline system's score.

Changing to a new benchmark and a new operating system didn't alter a performance trend we've seen over the past few months: AMD Athlon-equipped PCs continue to blow away Intel Pentium 4-based systems--even those boasting higher clock speeds. For this roundup, we tested a Falcon Northwest Mach V system with AMD's latest processor, the Athlon XP 1800+. The processor's name is a bit misleading, since it actually runs at 1500 MHz (see " AMD's Ratings Gambit," for more on AMD's XP CPUs). Nevertheless, the Mach V we tested scored 121 on PC WorldBench 4, setting a record for performance and beating the fastest 2-GHz Pentium 4 system we tested by 14 points. The Mach V was the only machine in this review running the costlier Windows XP Professional (the others used XP Home Edition), but we doubt the OS boosted its speed. If anything, XP Pro--with its additional services--may run a bit more slowly.

A PC for Everyone

We separate power and value systems by performance and features, not necessarily by cost; but you naturally pay more for top-shelf features. Power systems offer the latest and greatest technologies and are best suited for high-end activities such as advanced gaming or video editing. Value systems, all falling between $1000 and $2000 in this review, are sufficient for most people's needs. They'll do for most types of home businesses, for telecommuting, and often for some forms of digital entertainment such as burning music CDs or playing MP3s. Of course, they're also great for Web surfing, e-mail, and word processing.

Whether your computing needs call for a dragster or a family sedan, you'll find plenty of options here.

• See more like this:
• windows xp,
• home pcs,
• abs,
• dell,
• alienware,
• falcon,
• polywell,
• compaq,
• gateway,
• nutrend,
• apple