Top 15 Home PCs
Plenty of new PCs make their debut and our value chart includes handsome systems at attractive prices.
Sean Captain
Seven systems are new to this month's chart, but familiar names occupy the top positions. MicronPC's updated Millennia Max XP2, now with a 1.4-GHz Athlon processor, replaces its 1.3-GHz sibling of the same name in the top power spot. Its dazzling PC WorldBench 2000 score of 193 is the second-highest we've seen for a Windows Me-equipped PC.
Equaling the Millennia Max XP2's performance mark is the 1.4-GHz Aurora DDR from Alienware, a specialty vendor of gaming PCs. Alienware's first entrant in our Top 15 Home PCs competition made quite an impression, with a towering, jet-black case and matching components as well as thundering sound courtesy of Klipsch's ProMedia 5.1 speakers. A price of $3599 dims the Aurora DDR's glow, however.
Another gaming-machine vendor, Falcon Northwest, also competed for the first time this month. Scoring 197 on PC WorldBench 2000, Falcon's 1.4-GHz Mach V set a performance record for Windows Me systems, but it lacks the Aurora's polish. At $3195, it's also pricey.
Our value chart includes handsome PCs that set you back quite a bit less. A noteworthy newcomer is IBM's 1-GHz NetVista X40i, a svelte PC with an integrated LCD monitor and surprisingly good performance for an all-in-one system. Another new model, Compaq's Presario 5000, is nicely packaged for first-time buyers or for families seeking a second PC for light-duty Web surfing and office work.
But the top of our value chart belongs to two veteran systems: HP's Pavilion 9820 and ABS's Multimedia System 2 each slid up the scale a notch after IBM discontinued last month's number one NetVista A40i.
- Page 1 of 18
- Next ยป
