Which PC Do You Need?

In a world filled with so many different types of PCs, is it possible to find one that fits you to a T? When it comes time to replace your home or office PC, you could opt for a big tower, a little shoe box-size unit, or a hefty desktop-replacement notebook, to mention a few possibilities. With so much variety, how do you decide which PC is appropriate for you?

We examined and lab-tested several types of computers to find out what you can and can't do with them, and to learn what trade-offs you make when you choose one over another. We scrutinized four categories: big tower PCs; small systems, including all-in-ones (units that integrate case and monitor); wide-screen desktop-replacement notebooks; and beige boxes. Using test systems in each category, we compared size, performance, upgrade potential, overall design, and price. We discovered that no matter what your quirk, there is probably a PC--whether huge or tiny, portable or nearly immobile, fully equipped or basically stripped--waiting out there for you.

Big and Tall

Huge tower PCs certainly don't appeal to everyone, but for the person who has money to burn and space to spread out, and who wants off-the-charts performance, a big PC could be the ticket.

Large, decked-out PCs typically have several inherent advantages over small, space-saving systems or even a basic beige-box PC. Most towers tend to be huge, usually 22 inches tall by 10 inches wide by 22 inches deep. Such dimensions give them lots of room inside for massive graphics cards and the cooling apparatus required by the fastest processors, and their large motherboards can accommodate all manner of upgrades.

The Alienware Aurora Extreme, one of the tower PCs we examined, used its high-end components to blaze through our PC WorldBench 4 tests. Employing a 2.2-GHz Athlon 64 FX-51 CPU and 1GB of RAM, the Aurora Extreme earned a score of 141--one of the fastest scores we've seen from any desktop PC. The other big tower we looked at, Cyberpower's Gamer Infinity 9900 Professional, used its 3.4-GHz Pentium 4 processor and 1GB of RAM to score 135 on PC WorldBench 4--obviously not as speedy as the Alienware system, but still quite fast nonetheless.

Both systems also turned in impressive graphics performance in our tests. The Alienware delivered 127 frames per second in the game Return to Castle Wolfenstein at 1280 by 1024 resolution and 32-bit color; the Cyberpower, 137 frames per second. Considering scores like those--some of the fastest we've seen--it's no wonder that many gamers prefer tower PCs.

But top speed might not be the only reason to consider a tower. A big box usually gives you flexibility: If your system didn't come with a FireWire port or enough USB ports, you can simply add a card that has them. Want to record television programs on your computer? Add a TV-tuner card. Gigabit ethernet? A 7.1-channel sound card? A Serial ATA adapter and dual hard drives so you can set up a RAID array? With enough expansion slots and drive bays in the system, you can upgrade at will. The ample space inside both of the big towers we looked at--three slots and two bays were empty within the Alienware and two slots and three bays were available in the Cyberpower--would allow performance-hungry owners to do almost anything with them.

On the other hand, with a smaller PC upgrading can prove nearly impossible. Getting into a small system in the first place is often quite difficult; and even if you are able to open it, a small system usually lacks the room for upgrades.

The downside to a humongous tower: Stuffing one full of powerful components usually means it will need lots of fans to keep cool. In fact, the Cyberpower system uses a total of nine fans--even for its hard drive and graphics card. And fans create noise; the Alienware and Cyberpower systems both ran quite loud.

However, the Cyberpower does offer some compensation: It includes control knobs and digital temperature gauges for two fans on the front of the case, allowing you to modulate some of the amount of air you send through the system.

Many big towers distinguish themselves with unusual designs. Both the Alienware and the Cyberpower look distinctive--for instance, both have see-through panels (a feature becoming more common on big towers, especially those aimed at gamers). The Alienware system resembles a spaceship, with silver grilles decorating each of the bottom corners and an alien face with red lit eyes adorning the top. Both computers also have lights that illuminate their fans, giving the interior of each system an eerie glow.

These super systems usually require super investments. Alienware demonstrated little restraint with the Aurora Extreme we looked at; as configured, it would cost you almost $4000, not exactly chump change when you can easily buy an unadorned basic system for less than $800. The Cyberpower Infinity 9900 Professional costs $3700. But if you're looking for the best in performance and upgradability, a tower should be for you.

On the Small Side

Instead of favoring a PC that offers infinite expansion possibilities and sky-high performance, you may prefer a small, unobtrusive system--to save space, perhaps, or for portability. Some of these PCs look like Mini Coopers next to SUV-like tower systems, but they manage to pack all their components into compact cases, making them much easier to move around. While some of these little systems are designed for use by company field representatives on the road, others are often aimed at users who need a fairly portable but high-powered PC.

One of the small systems we looked at for this review, the Falcon Northwest FragBox Pro, comes equipped with a powerful processor and graphics card to satiate the needs of performance-hungry gamers. A 2.8-GHz Pentium 4 CPU and 1GB of RAM helped it earn a score of 123 in our PC WorldBench 4 tests. The FragBox Pro's graphics test results were quite fast, though not as impressive as the speedy scores turned in by the Alienware and Cyberpower tower machines.

Another small system we examined, the Stealth Computer Littlepc LPC-401X, had a 3.2E-GHz Pentium 4 processor (Intel's latest version of the Pentium 4) and 512MB of RAM. It earned a PC WorldBench 4 score of 121--a little slower than other systems with a similar configuration, but still quick enough to handle most tasks. Unlike the FragBox, the Littlepc uses integrated graphics, and it lacks an AGP slot that would allow you to upgrade to a graphics card.

According to Stealth Computer, the Littlepc was designed for users who need top processing power and portability. The unit is just 3 inches thick, under 6 pounds, and smaller than a box of crackers.

Though the Littlepc ran quietly, it came with only one small fan for the CPU. Using such a powerful processor in such a petite case without a phalanx of fans causes heat issues: The Littlepc's black aluminum chassis became very hot while the system was on. Stealth Computer insists that the heat is not a problem.

As you might imagine, upgrading a small PC such as the Littlepc would be next to impossible. Because of its diminutive size, you won't find many things on it that are standard on other PCs, like a floppy disk drive, and there's no room to add such components, either.

In fact, expansion is often limited--if not at times out of the question--with small systems. The shape and size preclude room for extra bays to hold additional drives or slots to take extra expansion cards. The Littlepc does, however, have an open slot for extra RAM. Falcon Northwest's slightly bigger but still diminutive FragBox Pro, on the other hand, offers a little more: one open 3-inch drive bay and one open expansion slot.

The FragBox Pro is a tad bulkier than the Littlepc, and it ran cooler in our tests, thanks to a few fans serving the processor and graphics card. It measures 8.3 inches wide, 9.5 inches high, and 12 inches deep, and comes with a handle on top for easy toting. At 14 pounds, it's light enough to carry around. (But don't forget: You still have to lug along a monitor, speakers, a keyboard, and a mouse.) Like many tower PCs, the FragBox has clear side panels, allowing you to peek at its slightly cramped interior, which is illuminated by blue lights.

Falcon's entry-level FragBox comes in at a relatively bargain price of $1095 (not including a monitor), but to get the configuration we looked at, you'll have to shell out a little over $2200, including the price of a monitor. The Littlepc models also start out at around $1095, but the model we tested, with a 200GB hard drive and a DVD-ROM/CD-RW combination drive, costs $1965, not including a monitor. The company doesn't sell regular monitors, but it does special-order units for industrial applications.

All-in-Ones

Another category of space savers, all-in-one PCs, don't take up much area on a desktop and also can be portable. Manufacturers such as Gateway, MPC, and Sony offer all-in-one PCs that are geared at users who need to save space and don't intend to upgrade components.

We took a look at the Gateway Profile 5XL. It weighs 25 pounds, and its small footprint takes up just a little more desk space than a piece of letter-size paper.

With all of the parts incorporated into one piece and no ugly power and video cords linking the monitor to the PC, the Profile 5XL is a good solution for users who require the quickest setup possible: Connect a few cords, press the power button, and you're good to go. Adding a wireless mouse and keyboard further cleans clutter off your desktop.

Like other small PCs, all-in-one systems allow little room for expansion or upgrades. To open the Profile 5XL, we had to use a screwdriver to remove four screws. Once we got inside, we found the motherboard perched vertically behind the LCD, stretching from near the base to almost the top of the monitor's back. Components and cords were tightly packed in the narrow space, making it a challenge just to add more RAM in the one open slot. Surprisingly, the Profile 5XL has one open 3-inch bay (for an extra hard drive, for example), but no expansion slots whatsoever.

Thankfully, the assortment of components and peripherals for all-in-ones can be first-rate. The Profile 5XL we examined came with a beautiful, integrated 19-inch LCD monitor, a 3.2-GHz Pentium 4 processor, and a rewritable DVD drive. (Other lower-priced configurations provide slower processors, a CD-RW drive, and either a 15- or 17-inch LCD monitor.)

With one of Intel's faster CPUs and 1GB of RAM, the Profile 5XL achieved a respectable mark of 122 in our PC WorldBench 4 tests--about the same as other similarly configured systems but speedy, regardless. It performed a hair better than the Littlepc, but certainly not as well as the two tower systems we looked at.

The Profile 5XL we saw, with its 19-inch LCD monitor, costs about $2300. However, like the Littlepc, the lowest-priced Profile 5 model (with an integrated 15-inch LCD monitor) costs roughly $1100.

Portly Portables

While one category of desktops has shrunk, a class of notebooks has increased in girth. Large, heavy desktop replacements often come equipped with lots of processing power, capacious storage, and monstrous wide-aspect screens. Some seem intended more for use on your desk than on your lap.

We examined HP's Pavilion Zd7000, a huge notebook with a 17-inch wide-screen display that's ideal for watching DVD movies. The Zd7000 runs Windows XP Media Center, the operating system optimized for home multimedia applications like photo slide shows and TV, and we found it ready for most any graphics-intensive task you might throw at it.

Using a 2.8-GHz Pentium 4 desktop processor and 512MB of RAM, the Zd7000 earned a score of 110 on our PC WorldBench 4 tests. Such a mark means the Zd7000 is not nearly as fast as many currently available tower systems; however, the laptop performed in line with similarly configured notebooks (and even most desktops with the same processor).

The Zd7000 weighs 11.1 pounds including its power adapter, so it's not the best system to tote from place to place. However, it would certainly be much more portable than even a small desktop system such as the FragBox--with that unit, you would have to take along all the necessary peripherals, which would add a lot of weight and be clunky to carry.

Behemoth laptops frequently include fast mobile graphics processors, such as the 128MB NVidia GeForce FX Go or the 128MB ATI Mobility Radeon 9700; the Zd7000 uses the former.

With a notebook, don't expect much in the way of upgradability. Most allow you to swap in a new hard drive or add RAM, and many have a PC Card slot for installing extras such as Wi-Fi, but that's it. If tinkering inside a PC is your passion, a notebook might not be your best choice.

The HP Zd7000, configured as we saw it, will set you back $2029, about $500 more than a similarly configured desktop PC would. But if you want the best of both worlds--that is, a powerful processor and a big LCD packed into a portable system--a desktop-replacement notebook could be just the sort of computer that you ought to choose.

What About the Beige Box?

Sometimes, you just need a basic system without all the flash. The beige box is still holding tenaciously to its place in offices and homes. But "beige box" is now just a convenient term for a system that is in fact no longer beige--many PCs of this type are modern-looking machines updated with industrial grays, purples, and even metallic hues. Nevertheless, they are sometimes hard to distinguish from one another.

We discovered, though, that some supposedly boring-looking systems blur the line between beige-box units and gaming PCs. We put two outwardly straitlaced systems--a Dell Dimension 8300 and an HP Pavilion A450e--through our tests, and found that each delivers performance more than adequate for gaming or other graphics-intensive tasks.

Using a 3.2E-GHz Pentium 4 processor and 1GB of RAM, the Dell Dimension 8300 earned a PC WorldBench 4 score of 128--a mark 3 points faster than the average score of similarly configured systems. In our graphics tests, it turned in frame rates comparable to those of the towers, making it a good PC for gaming.

The HP Pavilion A450e also performed well overall, notching a score of 124 in our benchmark. However, it lagged slightly behind the Dell on our graphics tests.

Systems like the Dell and the HP offer almost as much potential for expansion as some of the huge towers do. The Dell offers a good number of available slots and bays. To open the case, you simply press buttons on the top and bottom, and the system opens like a clamshell.

The Dell's drive bays have large green clips that hold the drives in place and allow for their removal without tools--a feature that even our high-end tower systems don't offer. The cables are neatly arranged, though not as well as those in the Alienware. Removing and adding memory required little effort.

The HP model was more challenging to open--we had to remove a few screws and take off the side panel. Adding memory to the HP is easy, but it has fewer expansion slots and bays than the Dell.

Ultimately, systems such as the Dell and the HP are great alternatives to a tower PC--they run fast, use many of the same components, and cost less. The Dell costs $2779--over $1100 less than the Alienware and more than $900 below the Cyberpower--and the HP checks in at $1730. Not a bad deal when you can save money and still have both speedy performance and room for upgrades.

PC Pointers: Supersize It or Downsize It?

Space constraints may determine which PC you choose, but other factors are also important to consider.

Tower PCs	Small Systems	Notebooks	Basic Boxes
Photograph: Marc Simon	Photograph: Marc Simon	Photograph: Marc Simon	Photograph: Rick Rizner
Pros
Extremely upgradable: Towers tend to have more open slots and bays than other types of systems. Speedy performers: Many towers use the latest processors, graphics cards, and storage, making them ideal for gaming or video editing. Flashy style: Some tower PCs resemble otherworldly technology, with lights, knobs, and other adornments.	Space savers: Small systems can easily tuck into a corner on your desk, or even attach underneath. Unique styles: Many petite systems have distinctive cases. Some have handles for easy toting. Strong performers: Despite their size, many little systems use speedy processors to perform briskly.	Ready to go: Even a big wide-screen notebook, which can weigh upward of 10 pounds, is much more portable than a comparable tower system. Not the latest components, but still strong: Many notebooks use processors that are a few ticks in speed behind those used by desktop systems, but big notebooks often turn in good performance numbers.	Cheap, cheap: A basic system can cost as little as $700--not bad, when a more exotic tower or notebook can set you back several thousand dollars. Wide selection: Basic systems are available with everything from the latest processors to somewhat older CPUs--offering plenty of choice between performance and cost.
Cons
Space hogs: Plan on clearing out space for your tower--they take up lots of room, whether on the desk or under it. Noisy: With all the fans necessary to cool the hot-running components, towers tend to run a lot louder than other types of systems. Not portable: Because they're big and heavy, towers are hard to move around.	Little room for upgrades: Because their components are compressed into a tight space, many petite systems offer no opportunity for tweaking. Hot, hot, hot: Small systems have less space to cool all the components and can run much hotter than a tower with lots of breathing room.	Bye-bye, upgrades: Compared with opening a desktop case, opening a notebook can be a much more involved task and yields few upgrade options. Expensive: The cost of a notebook can be considerably higher than that of a similarly configured desktop system, but such is the price of portability.	Less expansion room: Big towers beat smaller beige boxes on upgradability, though many basic systems offer almost as many slots and bays. Dull design: If you'd like a flashy system, a basic machine in gray or black might not suit your style.

PCs: Different Sizes, but Similar Guts

Many PCs---including the ones listed here---rely on often identical components. However, big systems such as those from Alienware and Cyberpower take up significantly more space than a smaller system such as Falcon's FragBox or Dell's Dimension 8300. (For information about the HP Pavilion Zd7000, see Top 15 Notebook PCs.)

HOW WE TEST: We test rewritable DVD drives under Windows XP Home on PCs with 1.67-GHz Athlon XP 2000+ processors and 512MB of DDR SDRAM. To test each drive, we use the bundled DVD video authoring, mastering, and packet-writing software; we use vendor-supplied media or Verbatim media. Tests conducted by the PC World Test Center. All rights reserved.

Profile: Using the Littlepc to Improve Lives

Harold Blank has been trying to assist people afflicted with cerebral palsy for many years. As a board member for CHI Centers in Baltimore, an organization that provides services to about a thousand people with various disabilities, he has led the development of specialized software that is designed to help the disabled communicate with others by using computers and touch-screen monitors.

Blank has used different PCs in the past, but currently he finds Stealth Computer's small system, the Littlepc, to have the best combination of light weight, small size, and power. Before discovering the Littlepc, Blank usually specified laptops for his clients. Though they were compact, notebook PCs were kludgy to use because Blank had to remove each machine's LCD and connect the remainder to a touch screen.

Now Blank mounts both the Littlepc and the touch screen to a special bracket on a user's wheelchair. The PC provides access to his Assistive Technology software, which includes over 4000 common words and phrases. Icons on the touch screen represent everyday categories such as food, clothing, and feelings. Through prerecorded audio, the software verbalizes user-selected categories and words, allowing the user to communicate easily by depending on common phrases or requests.

Considering that Blank started out with a DOS-based system that relied on icons glued to a keyboard, he believes the Littlepc is a vast improvement. Because he doesn't have to concentrate too much on tinkering with PC hardware, the Littlepc has allowed him to focus on improving the software to incorporate newer features, such as customized text-to-speech and different versions for other nonverbal people, such as stroke victims.

Profile: Long-Distance Health Care

American TeleCare, an Eden Prairie, Minnesota-based company that sells hardware and software enabling patients to consult with doctors and clinicians from their homes, recently was looking for new PCs to offer to clients. American TeleCare sets up computers for both clinicians and patients that allow the two to videoconference using phone lines and video cameras. Various pieces of medical equipment can be attached to the patient's system to monitor stats such as blood pressure, pulse, and glucose levels. The system then sends the data to the clinician.

According to Mark Voorhees, the company's purchasing manager, it was important for clients to have PCs requiring little setup or maintenance. Furthermore, customers needed large monitors that pivot to allow a clinician to view the patient.

Voorhees says the company was satisfied enough with the previous performance of Gateway's Profile 4 that it decided to offer the all-in-one model's latest incarnation, the Profile 5. Among the PC's merits, Voorhees points to its "easy setup and reasonable price for both our company and the clients."

Voorhees finds that the all-in-one system provides a sleek, space-saving box to house American TeleCare's patient-monitoring software. Although expansion is severely limited in the Profile 5, Voorhees asserts it's not a problem for his clients, who normally don't need to open up the system to perform upgrades. The Profile 5 "fits our applications very well," says Voorhees, "and [Gateway has] strong customer support for small businesses."