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Desktop Replacements<br />
These big-screened hulks—ranging from starter PCs to top-dollar hot rods—are<br />
best suited to short round trips, like between the home office and the deck. —C.N.<br />
Laptops<br />
Acer Aspire 9300<br />
$899 • us.acer.com<br />
The Aspire 9300 looks brutish and,<br />
fittingly, has minimal brains. With<br />
an AMD Athlon CPU, a paltry 1 GB<br />
of RAM, and last year’s Nvidia<br />
graphics card, the rig wheezed into<br />
last place during benchmarking<br />
and couldn’t run Quake 4. An<br />
unbelievable bargain at $899, the<br />
9300 eliminated every frill possible:<br />
The screen, for example, seems<br />
like an Etch A Sketch.<br />
WIRED So cheap you won’t<br />
worry about loss, fire, or theft.<br />
Front-mounted audio jacks.<br />
Swiveling webcam—retro!<br />
TIRED The Athlon CPU is a<br />
perennial laggard among laptops.<br />
Screen is unpleasant to look at for<br />
more than a few minutes at a<br />
time. Smallish, 120-GB hard drive.<br />
EDITORS’<br />
PICK<br />
Dell Inspiron 1720<br />
$2,089 • dell.com<br />
The monstrous 8.7-pound Inspiron<br />
1720 won’t be your first choice for<br />
flying. Yet it had the best battery<br />
life in the group, at 2 hours, 19 minutes.<br />
And it wasn’t stripped down<br />
to achieve battery longevity: The<br />
2.2-GHz Core 2 Duo, 2 GB of RAM,<br />
and 160-GB hard drive clocked<br />
some of the strongest performance<br />
stats in our entire roundup.<br />
WIRED Bootless media mode<br />
works well. Great screen quality.<br />
Handles just about any task<br />
awesomely. Comes in eight colors.<br />
TIRED Pricey. Morbidly obese,<br />
with lots of unnecessary trim.<br />
Awful keyboard. Nearly invisible,<br />
borderline-useless media keys<br />
along front panel. Tiny status<br />
lights are hard to read.<br />
Gateway NX860XL<br />
$1,921 • gateway.com<br />
Though a good all-around player,<br />
the NX860XL doesn’t live up<br />
to its cost. It turned in a solidenough<br />
performance for gaming<br />
and general apps, but nothing<br />
remarkable. The 100-GB hard drive<br />
is tiny for this category, and with<br />
a mere 64 minutes of battery<br />
life, you’ll always need sockets<br />
within reach. It’s stylishly clad in<br />
silver and black, but little else<br />
about this laptop excites.<br />
WIRED Gaming is passable<br />
despite the aging graphics card.<br />
Front-mounted audio ports and<br />
memory card slot.<br />
TIRED Cooling fan blasts nonstop.<br />
Too expensive for feature set.<br />
Still portly despite minimalist<br />
64-minute battery.<br />
Toshiba Satellite<br />
P205-S6287<br />
$1,350 • toshibadirect.com<br />
Toshiba’s always-reliable Satellite<br />
series offers a step up from the<br />
bare-bones Acer Aspire: a big,<br />
bright display, a cavernous 200-GB<br />
hard drive, and 2 GB of RAM. It’s<br />
also the lightest 17-incher we<br />
tested, at 7.3 pounds. Unfortunately,<br />
integrated graphics<br />
make gaming hopeless with this<br />
machine, though the modest<br />
price tag is some consolation.<br />
WIRED Bright display. Not<br />
expensive. Excellent front-mounted<br />
controls. Nice styling, minimal<br />
weight. Harman/Kardon speakers<br />
can really crank.<br />
TIRED Ancient CPU scored in<br />
C– range. Keys have too little<br />
travel, so good luck reaching Delete.<br />
WIRED TEST<br />
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