Lenovo ThinkCentre A60 D3U Somerville MA

The A60 D3U comes in a plain, elegantly designed case bearing Lenovo's signature matte black finish. This $949 (as of November 6, 2006) system means business: It has virtually none of the frills of the other consumer systems we tested, but it does have features that an IT manager might find useful. It's easy to remove the side of the case to gain access to the components: Thumbscrews hold down the side panel, which easily slides off when they are loosened. The system has limited expansion space available, with one open externally accessible drive bay, and no open internal drive bays. On the other hand, the unit does have four open slots for holding upgrade cards. The A60 D3U took advantage of its 2.2-GHz dual-core AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+ processor and 512MB of RAM to generate midrange performance results: Its above-average (for a cheap PC) WorldBench 5 score of 95 more than qualifies it for general business tasks.

Among the A60 D3U's business features are a built-in data encryption chip for safeguarding data on your hard drive; software for protecting passwords and encryption keys; and Lenovo's ThinkVantage management software to help system administrators configure and check the system remotely. You also get a copy of the corporate e-mail program Lotus Notes, plus Lotus's SmartSuite Millennium Edition office suite and Symantec's Client Security suite.

A pleasant bonus on the A60 configuration we tested was Lenovo's first 19-inch wide-screen monitor, the L192p Wide. This monitor rendered sharp, bright images; and its pleasingly thin bezel and clean design complemented the simple design ethos of the accompanying system. Our one complaint involves ergonomics: You can't adjust the monitor's height.

The A60 D3U is Vista-capable, and you'll find Vista upgrade information on the company's site.