Shuttle Shuttle XPC K6200

Although Shuttle Computer's XPC K6200 won't win any performance awards, this compact desktop should win top honors for a clever design that packs a lot into a little box. The small, attractive case fits easily on your desk (or bookshelf), and its glossy white facade will look great in your office. The clearly marked and easily accessible front-panel controls, along with the ultraquiet fan, round out this unit's great design.

Despite its small size and limited expandability, our XPC K6200 came nicely configured, with a 2.8-GHz Pentium 4 processor, 512MB of DDR333 SDRAM, a 100GB hard drive, integrated ATI Radeon 9100IGP graphics, and a dual-format DVD burner. The XPC K6200's performance was good, too; it produced a PC WorldBench 4 score of 117, at the low end of our performance scale, but still in line with similarly equipped systems.

The compact size, of course, comes with a price: The XPC K6200's difficult-to-access interior offers little room for expansion, with just one open externally accessible bay and no open memory sockets.

The unit sports four USB 2.0 ports (two in front, one the bottom of the unit, and another two in back), a serial port, and two backside FireWire ports, along with a TV-out connector, an S-Video port, and SPDIF in/out connectors for digital audio data.

Typing on the accompanying Logitech Cordless Elite Duo Bluetooth wireless keyboard/mouse combination seems a bit stiff and sounds tinny, but the full-featured keyboard has keys for launching DVD playback and e-mail and navigating the Web. The ergonomic mouse's page-back/page-forward keys move you through Web pages with a flick of the thumb.

The stylish black-and-silver 17-inch LCD complements the unit's compactness, and the display's responsive control buttons and top carrying handle are nice touches. The display was satisfactory, but it didn't wow us on either text or image tests. However, we found that the monitor's screen generated an oppressive glare, due to light reflecting from overhead fixtures.

The XPC K6200's ATI Radeon 9100 IGP integrated graphics chip set produced relatively low frame rates on our Return to Castle Wolfenstein and Unreal Tournament 2003 tests, comparable to similarly equipped machines. Nonetheless, we saw no significant glitches while playing games. DVD playback from the dual-format DVD burner exhibited no artifacts or stuttering.

The system's spartan documentation features an installation guide with color photos as examples, but the basic user manual lacks troubleshooting information.

Upshot: An eye-catching, compact design and performance suitable for anything short of heavy gaming make the Shuttle XPC K6200 a good choice for style- and space-aware users.

Scott Plamondon