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.
Although this unit features above average value for money, it suffers at the hands of only a single year of return to base warranty. One of the less impressive warranty types available as there's shipping to and from repairers to consider - in addition to the loss of the machine during repairs. Intermedia do offer a service where a mission critical PC can be replaced with a temporary loan system if it fails and cannot be repaired in a day. This is an extremely handy feature for small businesses operating on only a handful of machines.
Intermedia has also kept the costs down by not including any productivity software in the bundle. This does give you the flexibility to tailor your software suite to your needs using the money spared on the system, but OEM software is significantly cheaper than shrink wrapped boxes, so consider picking up all the software you need at purchase. Intermedia also offers client-by-client analysis to assess the correct productivity software for the machine's intended usage.
A strange inclusion with the system was a pair of Altech Lansing speakers, which are not a necessary inclusion for office work, but can be useful if you work with sound or listen to music.
Integrated graphics make another appearance; although it shares 64MB of the system memory, so take that into account when considering your memory needs.
Clean internal cabling and a tool less case makes the Techmart a dream to work on. The three free PCI slots two free DIMM sockets and AGP port add plenty of expansion potential to a machine with an already high spec. Building the unit around a standard ATX case means you won't have to worry about half height devices such as PCI or AGP graphic expansion and the limited options available.
Scoring second highest in SYSmark2002, this system finished just below average overall, narrowly pipped by the DigitalStar IntelliPro 4000GX. A great set of features, additional warranty and AGP graphics would make this a definite award contender, but at this price, it's still a whole lot of business PC for your buck.