WHAT'S HOT: The Poly K7-1400DDR we tested, priced at a reasonable $1999, made good use of its 1.4-GHz Athlon CPU and 256MB of DDR SDRAM, scoring a 115 on our WorldBench 4 tests. No Pentium-based machine we looked at could do as well. Bundled extras include a Lexmark X83 multifunction printer and Logitech Webcam. Five front-mounted USB ports provide plenty of places to hook up the camera, as well as other peripherals like a scanner, PDA, or MP3 player.

WHAT'S NOT: The 19-inch AOC 1995S monitor's performance was all over the map in our subjective tests. Text and icons in our Microsoft Word document were too blurry to work with, but photographic images and DVD play looked swell. However, the listening experience was diminished by very low sound volume from the Cambridge Sound Works audio system. Despite its snazzy Leadtek WinFast GeForce3 graphics board, this system fell victim to the unintended psychedelic effects in Quake III that we noticed in some other machines using the default NVidia driver that comes with Windows XP. A driver upgrade may fix that problem.

WHAT ELSE: The brushed-aluminum midsize tower case is solid and attractive, but the gray, spray-painted front plates of the 16X DVD-ROM and 16X/10X/40X CD-RW drives appear mismatched, undermining the case's sleek industrial look. Polywell includes a system manual so generic, it could come with almost any computer. Fortunately, the company includes component manuals as well.

UPSHOT: This speedy system has the power and gear for both office work and home entertainment, but you'll definitely want to select a better monitor.

SUMMARY

Polywell Poly K7-1400DDR PC WorldBench 4 score of 115, Athlon-1400 CPU, 256MB of DDR-266 SDRAM, Windows XP Home, two 40GB hard drives with IDE RAID, 16X DVD-ROM drive, 16X/10X/40X CD-RW drive, Leadtek WinFast GeForce3 graphics board with 64MB of DDR SDRAM, 19-inch AOC 1995 monitor, integrated sound, Cambridge SoundForce 100 speakers, network adapter, V.90 modem, midsize tower case; Lexmark X83 printer, Logitech USB Webcam, Easy CD Creator 5 Basic. Three-year parts warranty, five-year labor warranty; free, unlimited, 24-hour toll-free tech support. $1999 800/789-8027 www.polywell.com