Acer Extensa 2501LM
Acer have put together a well featured notebook at a great price, coming in over $300 lower than our price cap and offering a DVD burner and 2.8GHz P4 processor for maximum grunt.
Altech Silver Cube
Absolutely blitzing the competition, Altech takes out our highly coveted Labs Winner Award, just beating IBM to the top spot.
Heavy on both the features and quality, this unit was one of only three units in the roundup to feature a 17in TFT display, with the others, the Pluscorp INTEQ V26 and Apple iMac, falling by the wayside on price, hardware spec and performance.
Apple 12inch iBook
Coming in at the ridiculously low price of $1695, Apple offer a compelling unit for anyone wanting to shift away from the ubiquitousness of Microsoft and the Windows platform.
Apple iMac 17in
While you might not immediately think of Apple when it comes to business workstations, the iMac is a solid self-contained package, and does appeal to this market.
Astone Z7W
Finishing third in PCMark04, fifth in 3DMark01SE and around middle of the pack for battery life, the Z7W from Astone is an attractive and functional widescreen notebook with plenty of goodies.
ASUS M24N
Coming in under our stringent pricing scheme, ASUS bettered it by $50 and managed to include some great hardware and features unavailable in some of the more expensive units.
Avocent SwitchView IC
Avocent's SwitchView IC two-way KVM allows you to control two machines with only a single keyboard, mouse and monitor.
BenQ Joybook 5000-V022
This attractive laptop bucks the standard square and serious lines, with a funky curved edge on the chassis and matching display, a nice change for anyone after something different.
Canon i80 BubbleJet printer
Portability has been talked about a lot recently, and people are starting to get used to the fact that their printer can be just as portable as the rest of their equipment. Canon has been offering portable laptop printers for several years and selling just enough of them to persevere, however, with the digital camera boom they are starting to come into their own.
Canon i990 AND Epson Stylus Photo R210
Once upon a time not too long ago, your average inkjet printer had a single tricolour ink cartridge. Of course, the print quality was fairly ordinary, but it did the job. Today, with digital cameras the norm and home users wanting to print their own photographs, your photo printer may have as many as eight different ink cartridges.
Canon PowerShot Pro 1 and Olympus Camedia C-8080,
If you had asked me a few weeks ago what the advantages of eight megapixels (MP) were over five, I would have said very few. However, that was before I discovered the fun factor in being able to play with an image that is up to 115cm by just over 86cm (72dpi).
Dell Inspiron 1150
Managing a very respectable battery life of four and a half hours during a full productivity workload, Dell's Inspiron scored around middle of the pack under PCMark04 but failed to deliver in 3D, bringing up the rear in third last place.
Dell Optixplex GX270
Dell has seen considerable success in the consumer PC market, and has drawn on the expertise gained in that market to drive into the business market over the past several years.
Digital Star PowerNote 258SA
Absolutely blitzing the field for performance, no other notebook this month could get anywhere near the PowerNote 258SA from Digital Star, despite many trying. Pushing out an absolutely massive 4216 marks, this powerhouse left a 640 mark gap between it and its closest contender, the Toshiba Satellite A30.
DigitalStar IntelliPro 4000GX
Although falling slightly below par in our quality testing, the IntelliPro 4000GX managed to claw back points with a score 16 percent above the average for value, primarily due to its incredibly low initial purchase price.
Emagen Zephyra XT
Although heavily kitted out with an ATI Mobility RADEON 9700 featuring 128MB of dedicated video memory, 1.5GHz Pentium M and half a gigabyte of PC2700 DDR, the Zephyra XT finished in the lower half for overall placement.
IBM G40 2388BBM Express
A capable desknote, its bulk might make you think twice about travelling with it, but it does secure itself as a reasonable performer on the desk.
IBM ThinkCentre S50
IBM has a well-earned reputation within the corporate sector for providing exceptional quality desktop workstations. Their latest model – the ThinkCentre S50, is set to keep that reputation on track.
Intermedia Techmart SOHO
The Techmart SOHO is the only system in this roundup to be supplied with a copy of Windows XP Home rather than XP Professional. This highlights Intermedia's emphasis on the small office, home office environment with this system, where the additional networking features of XP Pro aren't necessary. Even so, it does mean you'll be restricted to using a peer-to-peer network, and you'll need an upgrade if you ever want to set up a client-server system. For the extra $90, it might be worth future-proofing and upgrading to Pro.
Kodak EasyShare LS743
The Kodak EasyShare LS743 is one of the new generation of mid-range digital cameras hitting the market. At its core is a 4 megapixel CCD, capable of 2,304 x 1,728 resolution, which sits behind a Schneider-Kreuznach C-Variogon lens with 2.8x optical zoom.
Labs roundup: 9 to 5 PCs: Introduction
We've taken seven top business PCs and run them through their paces to find out which should be your next upgrade.
Labs roundup: 9 to 5 PCs: Performance Analysis
Unlike many of our performance-based Labs, business workstations are a whole different world of PCs, focusing not on the maximum number of frames per second, or how many overall points they can churn out in any given benchmarking utility.
MSI MEGABOOK L61OI
MSI's MegaBook L61OI lives up to its 'mega' moniker with a large 15.4-inch widescreen TFT, desktop CPU, excellent graphics and pumping audio. The model we looked at was a pre-production prototype notebook and as such was a little shaky and did not come with all the inclusions a final model will have. As a proof of concept, however, the notebook is quite good.
Pluscorp INTEQ V26
One of the mantras of business computing is reliability. It all ties into TCO (total cost of ownership) - if a mission critical PC suffers a hardware failure, the resulting downtime can cost you a lot more than the price of an entire new system. As such, we in the PC Authority Labs always place a high emphasis on a good on-site warranty, such as that provided by a few manufacturers this month, including Pluscorp with its INTEQ V26.
Protac EXCEL G556
Built around the same notebook housing as the Emagen Zephyra XT, this attractive high shine lid is one of the better looking notebook covers we've seen, making this product appear out of its price range.
Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 Plus
For those users after goliath capacity drives with fast seek and access times, there's the Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 Plus.
Sony VAIO PCG-K64
While Sony's VAIO PCG-K64 may not be the smallest form factor notebook in our roundup, it is pretty smart looking, with a large sloping lid and keyboard; it's comfortable to work on.
Targa Traveller C50
An above average overall finisher, the Targa's claim to fame is undoubtedly its long battery run times, achieving the best part of 5 hours on a single charge whilst juggling a full productivity workload of Photoshop and Microsoft Office.
Toshiba Satellite A30/M34
Toshiba don't often venture into lower price point notebooks, so we were quite impressed to receive a system from them under $2500, let alone a desktop Pentium 4 3GHz processor, DVD burner and 64MB ATI RADEON 9000 IGP graphics.
Twinhead E121i Centrino
While the $2500 price ceiling means you're usually picking up larger form factored notebooks with an average 15in display, some manufacturers like Apple and Twinhead have put together smaller ultra portable 12 inch models for those who value size over all else.
Warranty watch
Buying a business PC, or indeed looking for a fleet of PCs for your business, can be a tricky enterprise at the best of times. While we've taken a lot of the hard work out of this for you with this guide to what's available, there are a few things you need to consider when shopping for your business.