Sys Technology Taskmaster A3200

At $854, the price of the Sys Technology TaskMaster A3200 is enticingly low, but the system still should be better than it is. To start with, the Taskmaster A3200 performed poorly in our WorldBench 5 tests: Its score of 69 is the second-worst of recently tested PCs.

Even a budget-priced machine should be fully suitable for word processing, but the 17-inch ViewSonic Q71 LCD monitor produced text so fuzzy it was difficult to read; details in photos didn't look sharp either, and colors appeared washed out. One bright spot is DVD playback--the system rendered movement well without visible artifacts--but again, colors appeared washed out. The two Altec Lansing Series 100 speakers sounded tinny, with no brightness or depth.

We wouldn't expect a PC that uses main memory for graphics to perform well in our video game tests, but the TaskMaster A3200 is at the bottom of the barrel. It generated only a fraction of the frame rates of even the slowest-performing systems. At 1024 by 768 resolution, systems with main-memory-based graphics averaged 48 frames per second in our Unreal Tournament test; the TaskMaster A3200 generated just 8 fps.

The nondescript black case sports a door at the bottom front that covers two USB 2.0 ports, which were inactive on our test system. But even if they were active, the ports would prove difficult to reach because they are recessed too far back in the round hole. The system does have four USB 2.0 ports on the back, but no FireWire port. The A3200 also lacks any open RAM sockets, although with 512MB of DDR400 SDRAM on board, the machine's performance issues shouldn't be blamed on lack of memory.

Sys Technology includes some component manuals and information on its support policies and warranty, but the company neglects to include an overall system manual.

Upshot: Despite its low price, this system's very slow performance and its lackluster monitor are likely to disappoint bargain hunters.

Scott Plamondon