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.
In fact, the Pluscorp managed to impress the Labs team, but only just missed out on scoring an award in this roundup. Its good build quality, productivity software bundle and easily managed case makes it a solid business system. Although not the highest performer, this system does have plenty of room for future upgrades or reconfiguration. The case is also exceptionally easy to work on, further facilitating PC surgery. One screw secures the lid to the chassis, which once removed gives full access to the motherboard, optical drives and power supply. Drives can have their power cables removed and the whole cage manoeuvred with minimal effort.
The INTEQ V26 wasn't the strongest performer in this Labs comparison, which is primarily due to the choice of a Celeron 2.6GHz CPU instead of the Pentium 4 used in most other systems. This is highlighted by its scores in SYSmark2002 and PCMark04, where it came bottom of the pack.
Also, while most other PCs in this roundup sport 80GB drives, the INTEQ's disk is only 40GB, but this should be enough for most office use.
Supplied with a BenQ FP-737-S 17in LCD monitor, this package is perfect for the space concerned, with a tiny footprint. While not as flexible for other business uses such as graphics manipulation its utilitarian nature does keep the price down, and at only $1,750 it represents great value.
The unit does have a few minor foibles, namely the casing. The desktop case is relatively shallow, so you'll need to install only half-height PCI cards in order to fit them in to the mini backplane. This also includes AGP expansion, so while the system is reasonably priced and needs only an add-on AGP device for additional performance; consider what you'll be able to house within the unit.
Overall, a quality system and solid overall package, although performance is lacking in light of the competition in this roundup.