Shuttle XPC G5 1100

A PC With Little Included RAM Can Do Light Work

This system offers less than 1GB of memory, which is the bare minimum that any full-featured new computer should include. Whether this amount of RAM is optimal for you depends on the PC's operating system: Windows Vista and Apple's Mac OS X don't run well with less than 1GB, Windows XP is fine with 512MB and not too bad with 384MB, and Windows 98 is good with 256MB. Depending on the distribution, Linux can run with as little as 128MB, but most Linux users are better off with at least 512MB--and 1GB is better.

The more installed memory your PC has, the more applications you can run smoothly at once, and the better the system will perform. Upgrading memory in a desktop after you purchase the PC is a snap, but usually it's worthwhile to buy the amount of memory you want preinstalled with the system.

Adequate Hard-Disk Capacity for Business or Light Home Use

With respect to hard-drive space, this system is in the low-to-midrange tier. Whether that's important depends on your needs. Though video gobbles up drive space at a prodigious rate, most other data types take up far less than 500GB.

For basic business purposes or light home use, even 80GB or 120GB might be enough. A better minimum is 300GB, especially if you download movies or music. Compact desktops that use smaller, 2.5-inch laptop drives offer less capacity. In that kind of setup, 120GB is a more realistic minimum, though 80GB will be enough for most users.

Monitor Is Adequate but Small

In this day and age, anything less than a 19-inch monitor is on the small side. The resolution will probably top out at 1280 by 1024 pixels (if it's a normal 4:3-aspect-ratio model), or at about 1440 by 900 (for wide-screen displays). That's still adequate if you don't need to fit much on your screen, if you're sitting relatively close to the display, or if you're viewing standard DVDs, but 1920-by-1200-resolution Blu-ray movies will be down-converted during playback and won't appear as crisp. 

Windows XP: Workhorse OS Runs Well

This PC ships with Windows XP installed. Windows XP has been the workhorse operating system for mainstream computers for nearly a decade, and generally works quite well. It also has by far the broadest driver and application support of any existing OS, and will run fine on systems with only 512MB of memory and a smaller (20GB to 40GB) hard drive.

However, Microsoft has seen fit to limit DirectX 10 support to (as well as slightly alter the driver model for) Windows Vista, XP's replacement. This means that eventually the latest games--as well as drivers for the newest hardware--may be available only for Vista. Even so, maintaining drivers for both XP and Vista isn't nearly as difficult for vendors as it was with XP and Windows 98, so XP will remain a viable operating system for the foreseeable future.

One thing to keep in mind: Common 32-bit versions of Windows XP can address no more than 4GB of RAM, even if your computer has more available. So unless you're using the 64-bit version of Windows XP, a computer with 2GB to 4GB of memory is the right target.