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Here's what you get -- and what you don't -- from the new crop of $500 computers. We tested four. Here's how they performed. By Kiplinger's Personal Finance Magazine Computer pricing has come to this: For just $330, you could recently buy an eMachines PC with a CD-RW drive, plus a 17-inch monitor, plus a Canon color inkjet printer. This Circuit City package may have been a loss leader (and the quoted price is after $300 in rebates), but the fact is, PCs are long past being luxury goods and now border on impulse buys. With retail prices in the $500 range for complete systems (and sale prices often much lower), how could you go wrong? Well, you might end up buying much less computing power today than you will want in a few months or a year. But if all you want is a word processor, e-mail and a way to browse the Web, todays crop of $500 machines should suffice. What they lack, however, is horsepower. Random-access memory, or RAM -- a lubricant that helps a computer run quickly -- is minimal. And the processor is a weaker cousin of Intels Pentium 4, so youll have only the bare minimum for Windows XP. When you run several programs at once, speeds may begin to lag noticeably. And dont expect top-of-the-line word-processing and spreadsheet software.
There are other limitations. Need a big hard drive to hold your digitized vinyl collection or loads of digital family videos? Forget it. Youll get only 40 to 80 gigabytes of storage. Theres also no separate graphics card with the muscle to let you blast space aliens at the highest resolutions. And although ads for these cheap systems often tout a "flat screen" monitor, thats just a sneaky way of making a cathode-ray-tube (picture-tube) monitor sound like a sleek LCD. Breakdown of the basics Given the constraints, we scaled back our expectations of what these machines could be expected to handle. Of the four we tested, three were $500 Windows-based machines. The fourth was from Apple Computer. Each comes with a drive that plays and burns CDs, and plays DVDs (but doesnt burn them). Never one to compete in high techs bargain basement, Apple nonetheless recently introduced the $500 Mac mini, a petite machine that is roughly the size of a cigar box. The catch is that the mini comes without a monitor, keyboard, mouse or speakers. To outfit the Mac mini, figure youll spend another $170 for very basic peripherals -- equivalent to those that come with the Windows machines. Related news and commentary on MSN Money
Although Windows PCs may be cheaper, they are also more susceptible to some things you dont want: computer viruses and spyware, which are programs that steal information about your Web-browsing habits and, sometimes, your personal financial data. As any Apple user will tell you, viruses rarely infect Macs. Thats because the Mac operating system is more secure against hackers than Windows, and the delinquents who write viruses prefer to attack the more common Microsoft operating system. Our Windows favorites are the $547 Dell Dimension 3000 and the $500 eMachines T3828 (made by Gateway), both of which are a bit faster than the $468 HP Pavilion a705w-b sold at Wal-Mart. (The Pavilion lags the others by two or three seconds when booting up programs or switching among them. Thats not dramatic, but if youre a speed demon, it grows annoying over time.) Apple aficionados wont have to look further than the Mac mini for a bargain. And we suspect itll capture a passel of Windows users who are tired of battling viruses. Beauty and the beasts When it comes to looks, the three Windows systems are the equivalent of dump trucks. Each measures 15 inches high, 16 inches deep and 7 inches wide, and weighs more than 30 pounds. The 17-inch monitors included are cathode-ray clunkers. There are advantages to being big, however. Unlike the Mac mini, each PC tower has room inside to add components, such as a DVD burner or a second hard drive. And the front panel of each PC has at least one USB port (the Dell has two) for connecting items that are frequently plugged and unplugged, such as digital cameras and MP3 players. (Both HP and eMachines also include a memory-card reader -- handy for transferring photos from digital cameras.) The Mac mini has no USB ports in front and only two in the back, although you can add more ports with a plug-in four-port hub, which costs about $10 to $20. The Mac mini is an altogether different animal. The entire computer is just 2 inches high and 6.5 inches square, and weighs only three pounds. Sheathed in an aluminum sleeve with a high-gloss, polycarbonate plastic top, the mini is a minimalist beauty that adheres to Apples tradition of slick industrial design. The Mac minis small footprint is very appealing to a lot of users, including Chuck Toporek, a 39-year-old senior editor for OReilly Media who lives in Portland, Ore. A writer and editor who focuses on books about the Macintosh, Toporek likes the fact that his mini is, well, mini -- it sits on a shelf rather than taking up desk space. And dont discount the efficient Apple operating system, which is a boon, he says, to people weary of Windows "system freezes and blue screens of death, not to mention countless viruses and worms." Fundamentally fast All four systems performed well on basic home-computing tasks: creating documents and spreadsheets and browsing the Web. The Mac mini held its own against the Windows systems and started faster, booting in just 35 seconds. By comparison, the Dell took 38 seconds to boot, and the eMachines and HP computers took 55 and 60 seconds, respectively. Although many factors determine a computers speed, the amount of RAM is key. The Dell comes with 512 megabytes of memory -- the minimum amount needed to run several applications at once, such as a spreadsheet, database and browser. The other computers have only 256 MB of RAM and lagged when we jumped between multiple programs. The good news is that RAM is cheap. HP and eMachines users can buy 256 MB from retailers for $40 to $60; Apple charges $75 for an extra 256 MB. (Mac mini users are advised to buy more RAM at the time of purchase because the minis case is very difficult to open. Another option is to take your mini to an Apple service provider.) Computer makers have to cut a few corners to reach the $500 price. For instance, the PCs in our roundup all reserve a portion of memory -- typically 32 MB or more -- for managing video images, leaving less RAM for other programs. Again, upgrading is an option. A Windows add-in graphics card that comes with extra RAM costs as little as $50 and will boost the computers performance on games and video applications. The Mac mini, by comparison, comes with an extra 32 MB of RAM earmarked for video processing. Another cost-cutting move: smaller hard drives. The Apple, Dell and HP machines all have 40-GB drives, which could fill up fast if you plan to store music, photo and video files. (The eMachines T3828 has an 80-GB drive -- a better size for most users.) Again, upgrades to the rescue: Dell Dimension 3000 customers can move up to an 80-GB drive for an extra $30. For $600, you can buy a Mac mini with an 80-GB drive and a 1.42-gigahertz processor (versus 1.25 GHz for the $500 model). As for HP, because its Pavilion a705w-b is a boxed-up, Wal-Mart package, you cant upgrade at the time of purchase. Pavilion users can buy a second, 80-GB drive for about $60, however. The HP Pavilion has another strike against it: Wal-Mart may be offering the machine so cheaply because its a stealth advertising vehicle. The Windows desktop is loaded with links to Wal-Mart products. True, you can trash and uninstall all this nonsense, but its aggravating. Battling viruses Windows users face a daily onslaught of viruses and spyware. As a result, some people have switched to Mac to avoid the security headaches. Michael Bean, a Mac user in Mesa, Ariz., recently persuaded his daughter Natalie to switch for that reason. Natalie, a nurse who also lives in Mesa with her husband, asked her father to examine her 2.6-GHz Dell PC, which was "running way, way slow," Bean says. "I brought it home, and the thing had 57 viruses on it." Its tough for any security program to keep up with the rapid rate at which bugs are spawned, and this protection doesnt come cheap. The Windows machines come with trial subscriptions for security programs, but users should expect to shell out annual fees of $40 or more once the trial ends. The Mac mini, however, doesnt come with security software. Why? Apple says it doesnt need it, which is a bit of hubris. Viruses are written for Macs, although they are much rarer than PC viruses. Mac users can buy security software, such as Norton AntiVirus 9.0 for Macintosh ($70). Software and extras All the computers come with plenty of software, including a word processor, spreadsheet, database and Web browser. The Macs software bundle is so complete you wont have to purchase any other programs for basic tasks. We particularly liked the Mac minis iLife 05, a suite of easy-to-use applications for editing photos and movies, playing DVDs, manipulating music files and doing other fun stuff. When it comes to managing media, Apple remains king. We were less thrilled with AppleWorks, a package of word-processing, spreadsheet, database and presentation software thats harder to use than comparable Windows programs. (For instance, Microsoft Works 8.0, which comes with the eMachines PC, has a better tutorial feature to help you through complex tasks.) If you want to move files from Windows PCs to the Mac, you may need special software to change their formats to make them Mac-compatible. Dell offers the WordPerfect Productivity Pack, a collection of business-caliber programs, including the venerable WordPerfect word processor and the Quattro Pro spreadsheet program. By comparison, eMachines Works 8.0 and HPs Works 7.0 are fine for basic tasks, but they lack some of WordPerfects high-end features, such as the ability to create Adobe Acrobat (PDF) files. All the computers can be made wireless. A wireless-network card to connect a computer with other computers and the Internet will set you back $50 for the PCs; Apple charges $100 for a card that will untether a Mac mini. If you dont want to be nickel-and-dimed to add functions to these machines, or you want a state-of-the-art PC, expect to pay well over $1,000. Dell, for example, recently offered a deal for a computer with a lightning-fast Pentium 4 processor, a 17-inch LCD monitor, a video card, a DVD-ROM drive and separate DVD burner, a gigabyte of RAM and a 160-GB hard drive for $1,400, after rebates. By Jeff Bertolucci, Kiplinger's Personal Finance Research, Jessica Anderson | |||||||||||
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