IBM NetVista M41-2.2GHz (6792-44U)

WHAT'S HOT: The design of the NetVista M41 is particularly conducive for getting inside the system. When you press in a button on each side, the entire case cover pops up and slides off, revealing a neat interior that gives you fast, tool-less access to components. Drives reside in cages that lift out via handles; but only one is available for expansion. You can add cards to the three open PCI slots after lifting up a purple slot cover. The case itself is black, with two USB 1.1 ports up front.

WHAT'S NOT: Those front-mounted USB ports were loose inside our test system's case, requiring us to open it up and snap them into the front slot before they could be used. The NetVista M41 we tested came with a 16X DVD-ROM drive, but it lacked a recordable optical drive. At this system's price, we would have expected a reasonably fast CD-RW drive.

WHAT ELSE: With a 2.2-GHz Pentium 4 and 256MB of PC133 SDRAM memory, this NetVista scored 103 on our PC WorldBench 4 tests--7 points below the average for comparably configured systems running Windows XP Professional.

The ATI Radeon 7000 graphics board with 64MB of video RAM is a surprising inclusion in this machine; although it's an older-generation board, it's more powerful than is typical for a corporate workstation.