Acer AM1202-U1850A

Any computer aimed the low end of the PC market will make sacrifices to meet its price. The Acer AM1202-U1850A ($320 list) is no exception, although it outperforms (in nearly all areas) the nettops on the market in the same price range. The M1202-U1850A, available at Staples, is a full-blown desktop, meaning it has a desktop-class hard drive, CPU, and optical drive and an expandable mini-tower chassis. It's a good, cheap e-mail and Web PC for the kids, and could serve as a good third or fourth PC in the house, replacing, perhaps, that old Pentium 4 desktop that is gathering dust in the den.

SPEC DATA:

Price as Tested: $320.00 List
Type: General Purpose, Value
Processor Family: AMD Athlon
RAM: 2 GB
Storage Capacity: 320 GB
RAID: No
Graphics Card: ATI Radeon 2100
Primary Optical Drive: Dual-Layer DVD+/-RW

SOURCE:www.pcmag.com

Lenovo IdeaCentre A600 (3011-4BU)

We were impressed enough with the $699 Lenovo IdeaCentre A600 we reviewed earlier this year for it to become our Editors' Choice for value all-in-one PCs. The Lenovo IdeaCentre A600 (3011-4BU) is the upgraded $1,399 model, complete with Blu-ray playback, TV tuner, wireless everything, and a neat four-in-one remote control that may actually be useful for once. It trumps anything that HP and Dell have put out in the all-in-one space, but falls just short of unseating our current mainstream all-in-one PC champion, the Apple iMac .
SPEC DATA:
Price as Tested: $1,399.00 Direct
Type: General Purpose, Media, All-in-one
Processor Family: Intel Core 2 Duo
RAM: 4 GB
Storage Capacity: 1000 GB
RAID: No
Graphics Card: ATI Radeon HD 3650
Primary Optical Drive: Blu-Ray Disc
Monitor Type: LCD Widescreen
Screen Size: 21.5 inches
SOURCE:www.pcmag.com

Polywell Poly ITX-9400B

Polywell has produced a bunch of technology-forward desktops in the past, including just about all of the latest processing technologies (Phenom II X4, Core i7, Core 2 Quad, GeForce, Radeon HD, and so on) as they are released. The Poly ITX-9400B ($699 direct) is no different in this respect, incorporating Nvidia's ION nettop platform. ION is a combination of an Nvidia GeForce 9400 chipset and Intel's Atom processor. It's kind of like what's in the Apple Mac mini but with a lower-powered processor and the addition of Blu-ray movie playback. A compact PC that doubles as a Blu-ray player is a great combo for movie buffs and home-theater geeks. However, you'd better have built up quite a library of Blu-ray discs if you're choosing this system over similarly priced, more general-purpose desktops. Video playback and the usual Web-surfing duties of a nettop are about all it's really good for—multimedia creation is too demanding for it.

SPEC DATA:

Price as Tested: $699.00 Direct
Type: General Purpose, Media, Value
Processor Family: Intel Atom
RAM: 4 GB
Storage Capacity: 320 GB
RAID: No
Graphics Card: nVidia ION/GeForce 9400
Primary Optical Drive: Blu-Ray Disc

SOURCE:www.pcmag.com

Dell Inspiron 1545 (i1545-004ST)

For many families and school-bound teenagers, there's only room in the budget for a laptop with basic amenities. The Dell Inspiron 1545 (i1545-004ST) meets two of the most basic laptop requirements: Both its screen and hard drive are large enough to handle the gamut of multimedia tasks. It isn't a speed demon by any stretch, as its Intel Pentium-branded processor lags behind the mainstream Intel Core 2 Duos, but you won't hear a peep from frugal shoppers. Available at your local Staples for $650, this whopper of a bargain comes with a nice 15.6-inch widescreen, 320GB of storage space, and 4GB of memory—all of which should be enough to offset the processor's shortcomings.
SPEC DATA:
Price as Tested: $650.00 Street
Type: General Purpose, Media, Value
Operating System: Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium
Processor Name: Intel Pentium T4200
Processor Speed: 2 GHz
RAM: 4 GB
Weight: 5.8 lb
Screen Size: 15.6 inches
Screen Size Type: widescreen
Graphics Card: Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 4500MHD
Storage Capacity: 320 GB
Networking Options: 802.11a/g
Primary Optical Drive: DVD+R DL
SOURCE:www.pcmag.com

Maximum Contour

The designers at Kinesis Corp. need either less coffee or more oxygen. The Kinesis Advantage Pro USB ($359 list) challenges the notion of a flat keyboard by affixing keys to a bowl-like chassis. Your palms rest on the ridge, and your fingers drape into a ravine walled with letters and numbers. Typing in this position nullifies wrist movement while keeping stress on your forearms to a minimum.

SOURCE:www.pcmag.com

MyKeyO Keyboard with Organizer

Even though many of us use computers, our desks are still strewn about with other stuff we need—Post-It Notes, pens, pencils, aspirin, business cards (including our own), paper clips, and so on. If we're especially organized, we might have a container for each type of item. The new MyKeyO Keyboard Organizer offers a different method for organizing most of that clutter. Nestled under the standard QWERTY and quite sturdy keyboard is a tray with 14 compartments for holding your indispensable items.

SOURCE:www.pcmag.com

BFG GeForce GTX 275 OC

The BFG GeForce GTX 275 OC ($250 street) graphics card holds 896MB of GDDR3 and a single Nvidia GPU with the core, stream, and memory clocks nudged up to 648 MHz, 1.44 GHz, and 2,304 MHz. The board is attractively priced, but doesn't quite break the $3.00 per frame per second mark. Still, it's a good value, and even in a game as demanding as Far Cry 2, it's fairly capable. Performance won't get close to 50 fps in such a graphics-intensive title, but even with anti-aliasing off, hitting that mark requires a far more expensive card. For the majority of games, though, this board will work well. In short, you'll get clean graphics, not cleaned out.

SOURCE:www.pcmag.com