Reviewed on October 31, 2008The HP Pavilion a6620f makes a decent case for its budget price. We like the design and the built-in digital-audio ports, and if you're on an unbreakable budget, the a6620f will get you through a variety of processes, but we recommend saving up for a system that will give you a more powerful set of components for a negligible price difference.TAGS:HP Pavilion, digital audio, HP, portable hard drive, slot, Dell Inspiron, port, Ethernet, PCI, 64-bit, Intel, graphics chip, DVD burner, hard drive, adapter, DVD
Reviewed on October 16, 2008On certain tests, Dell's off-the-shelf Inspiron 530s comes out ahead of its slim-tower competition, but its situational performance edge isn't dramatic enough to overcome its underwhelming features. You can find cheaper systems that might be a tick slower on certain tasks, but on balance they'll let you do more.TAGS:Acer Aspire, Dell Inspiron, Acer Inc., HP Pavilion SlimLine, eMachines Inc., HDMI, graphics chip, 64-bit, Intel, Ethernet, HP, PC, games, video
Reviewed on September 11, 2006Other vendors might offer more flexible configurations and better deals on components, and the specter of HD video looms darkly, but the 24-inch iMac's sprawling display and convincingly capable features should set most people's minds at ease. We highly recommend this new iMac as a PC that doubles as a secondary home-entertainment system.TAGS:Apple iMac, Intel Core 2 Duo, Apple Computer, Dell XPS, vendor, graphics chip, LCD, PC, hard drive
Reviewed on December 14, 2006The Aspire L310 works as a trim, affordable computer that will also serve light home-theater-PC duties. It doesn't offer as much room for improvement as its competition, but as long as you don't have plans for upgrading or running Windows Vista full bore, this system will serve you well.TAGS:Acer Inc., Acer Aspire, Microsoft Windows Vista, graphics chip, PCI, HP, memory, laptop computer, video, Microsoft Windows
March 29, 2007Start-up releases beta version of Windows software to squeeze processing power out of multicore chips and graphics engines.TAGS:graphics chip, programming