It’s hard for manufacturers to make money from selling PCs at low prices, unless they sell them in huge volumes.

Admittedly, the group of low-cost PCs reviewed in this group test of bargain PCs represents the extreme low end of the market, but the fact remains that the cost of PCs is falling all the time.

Total sales of desktop PCs are also falling as more people switch to buying laptop computers. Worldwide PC sales are still growing at more than 10 per cent each year, but most of that growth is coming from laptops.

And, of course, laptops make particularly good sense for home users as they take up a lot less space and can easily be carried from room to room and used by different members of the family.

The other key factor behind the rise of laptop sales is the increased performance and efficiency of the latest processor designs. New processors, such as Intel’s new Core range, manage to combine high-performance with low-energy consumption and heat output.

As a result, we’re now starting to see laptops and desktop PCs based on the same Core Duo and Core 2 Duo processors. This means there’s little reason for mainstream home-users to buy a bulky desktop PC when they can buy a slimline, lightweight laptop.

That raises the question of whether or not we are witnessing the slow death of the desktop PC. Admittedly, there will always be a market for PCs with plenty of room for internal expansion and upgrades – some users, particularly high-end workstation users, simply can’t do without these features.

And desktops still have the edge in ultimate graphics performance and hard disk capacities (although the growth of network storage is eroding that latter advantage). But overall in the home market, it seems likely that desktop PCs will start to adapt themselves for more specialised roles.

Intel’s Viiv technology and AMD’s rival Live brand have not exactly set the world alight, but it’s generally thought that desktop PCs will soon start to develop into household media servers or hubs. We’ll all have our own PCs – probably laptops – for our personal use, but each household will also have a PC that acts as the centrepoint of their home-entertainment system.

You’ll download music and films from the internet onto your home media server, as well as store photos, music and other files belonging to individual family members. The media server PC will then stream files to the PCs used by family members, or to devices, such as the television or music system.

This article is part of a group test of bargain PCs.

Other articles are:
Ambros Shuttle SS31T
Evesham Axis STR Plus
Mesh D820 Value +
PC Nextday Zoostorm 1-3301 Versatile PC
PC Specialist Trident s500
Watford Aries Performa 3500+RV
Graphs and table of features can be read via our Pdf downloads.