Pentium II-400s Crash the $2000 Barrier

A chicken in every pot, a car in every garage, and a Pentium II-400 in every desktop PC. It may sound like a campaign promise, but the latest round of price cuts from Intel has transformed PII-400 systems from boutique purchases into populist fare. For the first time, PCs based on Intel's fastest PII CPU enjoy a majority on the power desktops chart--12 of the 20 systems there use the 400-MHz CPU. What's more, the PII-400 this month makes its first appearance on the budget chart, in the form of the $1999 TigerDirect Tiger Pro 400.

You could sum up Intel's marketing campaign with a simple phrase: "It's the price, stupid." Even though no competing CPU poses a performance threat to the fastest Pentium II models, system makers pay significantly less for PII-400 and PII-350 CPUs than they did a month ago. And those savings are being passed on to you in the form of lower system costs. The average price for reviewed PII-400 systems plummeted from $2920 last month to $2598, a reduction of $322. PII-350 systems fell even further--a whopping $355--from an average of $2618 in August to $2263 in September.

In our review of seven new PII-400 systems this month, we found that even the least expensive models pack enough features to stave off expensive upgrades down the road. Two PII-400s we tested this month came in at under $2000--the Comtrade Professional AGP GC6/400 at $1975 and the Tiger Pro 400--and come with 64MB of RAM, 17-inch monitors, and respectable hard disks that store 6GB or more of data. The Comtrade Professional AGP GC6/400 fell short due to Comtrade's brief one-year warranty as well as a dismal showing in our anonymous technical support calls. The TigerDirect Tiger Pro 400 places 14th on the budget chart, thanks in large part to improved support policies that include a three-year warranty on parts and labor.

More significantly, TigerDirect seems to be cleaning up its act. The company has a long history of service complaints from PC World readers, but officials there say they have addressed the problem. Our anonymous calls to TigerDirect's technical support seem to confirm this claim: We received prompt and courteous answers to our questions--a big change from earlier calls. If TigerDirect has indeed solved its service woes, the company's systems may warrant further consideration from budget-minded users.