And the trickle-down continues. At the end of last year, we saw quad-core desktops coming in under $1,000. Fast-forward three months and quad-core has become even less expensive. The $700 Acer Aspire M5100 is an excellent representative of this new breed of affordable quad-core desktops. The questio
The Acer Aspire X1200 line of minidesktops fits budget PC components inside a compact case and offers some features that let it act as a light home theater companion. Our $450 review model came with a dual-core AMD processor, 4GB of memory, and 64-bit Windows Vista, which make it a very strong day-t
Acer's $459 Aspire X3200 is essentially the triple-core version of the dual-core X1200 slim tower PC we reviewed a few months ago. Aside from the CPU, every component from the hard drive to the memory to the operating system is the same. And while three cores sounds better than two on paper, you act
The Acer Aspire X1700-U3700A is the third system in Best Buy's recent lineup of budget PCs. We gave the other two releases (Dell Inspiron I530S-119B and eMachines ET1161-07) average marks for a lack of features and poor performance scores (respectively), but the $480 Acer succeeds where the others f
With its compact shape and attractive black case, the IBM NetVista A series looks right at home in both small businesses and home offices. But Big Blue realizes that even the most dedicated workers occasionally unbutton their collars, so the latest incarnation of the line includes decidedly nonstuff
The IBM NetVista S42 offers exactly what you'd expect from a corporate PC: a compact, if unattractive, design; solid application performance; weak graphics hardware; and IT-friendly deployment and support tools. It also serves up a few welcome surprises, such as six USB 2.0 ports and a pivoting, fla
Outfitted for corporate cubicles, the IBM ThinkCentre S50 may also be just the thing for small offices with an eye toward data management and PC usability. A laughably easy-to-access interior showcases a series of capable parts, although SOHO users should look into swapping the CD-ROM for a CD-RW. O
IBM's ThinkCentre A series is the company's most consumer-friendly PC line, offering "great technology at affordable prices." The $1,857 ThinkCentre A50p review system that IBM sent us (model number 8194E6U), however, offers only a middling set of midrange features that competitors sell fo
Outfitted for corporate cubicles, the IBM ThinkCentre S50 may also be just the thing for small offices with an eye toward data management and PC usability. The series offers a range of Intel Celeron D and Pentium 4 processors inside a crafty small-form-factor case that's laughably easy to access. Ou
Now that Lenovo has taken the reins of IBM's PC business, what changes are in store for the company's venerable desktops? If the ThinkCentre A52 is any indication, not many. Designed for small and medium-size businesses, our $1,363 review system, which still bore an IBM logo on the boxes and the har