Dell designed the Dimension XPS M200s as a workhorse, not a thoroughbred. This system is noticeably short of flashy goodies and gewgaws, but it's ready and willing to tackle any home PC chore you've got. For only $1,991 the M200s covers all the basics, including respectable performance, and tosses in a crisp 17-inch monitor, a speedy 56-kbps modem, a roomy 4.3GB hard drive, and a subwoofer to go with your speakers. Plus Dell's outstanding customer service and tech-support programs. You won't find any cute buttons to pop up your browser, but you can count on good old-fashioned price performance. Except for the $2,046 Micron (which had the advantage of 48MB of RAM), the M200s was the fastest MMX on both our business-app and game benchmarks. Two reasons for this strong showing are its fast IBM hard disk and its Matrox Millennium II graphics card. As you can see in our 17-inch monitor review, the 1000LS isn't the top monitor you can buy, but it's quite good by this review's standards. Like the Sony, which costs $500 more, the Dell comes with 4MB of video RAM, so you can run in 24-bit color even at maximum resolution. Unfortunately, the review model Dell sent wasn't in its factory-fresh state, so we were unable to judge the out-of-box experience. But we've had very few problems with Dell in the past, and because its customer service has the best reputation in the business, we feel comfortable recommending this box for newbies and pros alike
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