DELL DIMENSION 8200
DELL DIMENSION 8200
HardwareDesktops CNET Hardware editors rate desktop PCs on a scale of 1 through 10. Any product achieving an 8 or better can be considered for an Editors' Choice Award. To calculate the rating, different criteria are scored on a 1 through 10 scale, weighted as detailed below, and collated to arrive at a final score. Evaluated systems are categorized as cheap, home, or leading-edge. The rating criteria, with their weights: Price (cheap PCs, 25 percent; home PCs, 25 percent; leading-edge PCs, 15 percent of the total rating)The lower the price, the better. A score of 6 represents an average price for the class of PC under consideration, while a 10 would be exceptionally low and a 1 exceptionally high. Performance (cheap PCs, 15 percent; home PCs, 15 percent; leading-edge PCs, 30 percent)CNET Labs runs a suite of tests to measure a PC's applications and games performance. For applications testing, systems are evaluated with BAPCo SysMark2000 and assigned a numerical value. A rating of 100 indicates the tested system has matched the performance of the current reference system; 200, twice the performance of the reference system--in this case, a Dell Dimension XPS with a 600-MHz Pentium III, 128MB of RAM, and a GeForce 256 DDR graphics card. BAPCo's real-world comprehensive tests use a range of Web creation, multimedia, and office productivity applications, from Excel 2000 to Photoshop 5.5. For games performance, technicians run two tests. One measures the system's performance while playing Quake III by counting the frames per second the system can produce. The other uses the 3DMark2000 benchmark to measure the display adapter's ability to render 3D images at different detail levels. Features (cheap PCs, 20 percent; home PCs, 25 percent; leading-edge PCs, 20 percent)Desktop PC features--and their quality--vary widely. We evaluate: • Size and speed of the hard drive • Amount of system memory • Speed and output quality of the video card • Sound system and speakers (if present) • Speed of the modem (if present) • Type and capacity of removable storage • Variety and number of ports • Other hardware extras Monitor Quality (10 percent) Bundled Software (5 percent) Upgradability (cheap PCs, 10 percent; home PCs, 2 percent; leading-edge PCs, 5 percent)The upgradability score is based on several criteria: How easy is it to access drive bays, open the chassis, and access the card slots? How many slots are available, and what kind are they? How many memory slots are available,...