Pricewatch

The faster 433MHz Celeron processor has won over Dell and Viglen for their budget systems, but once again, Time is ahead of the game.

It has a 466MHz Celeron in its Home PC, which at £816.63, is also cheaper than its direct rivals.

Low-cost systems on the High Street remain the preserve of Fujitsu, which still has the cheapest PC. For £690, you can get a Fujitsu Myrica with a 400MHz Celeron chip, 64Mb of RAM and an 8.4Gb hard drive.

Evesham is also offering a real budget option with a lower price than any other featured in our table. Its £586.33 Prestige Celeron has a 333MHz Celeron processor, 32Mb of RAM and a 4Gb hard drive, but no modem or CD-ROM drive.

At the higher end, the Pentium III has taken a firm hold, with all the manufacturers using either the 450 or 500MHz version of this processor, with the exception of Compaq and Hewlett-Packard.

The best-value Pentium III PCs can still be found on the High Street - Fujitsu's Ergo Pro costs £1,299 for a 450MHz chip, 128Mb of RAM, an 8.4Gb hard drive and an 8Mb ATI Xpert 98 graphics card.

Pick of the Month

If you're looking for an outstandingly well-specified system, you won't go far wrong with the Dell Dimension XPS T500. Powered by a 500MHz Pentium III processor, it comes with 256Mb of RAM, a huge 25.5Gb hard drive and a 16Mb NVIDIA TNT graphics card. And as if this weren't enough, it also has a DVD-ROM drive, a 19in monitor and a Zip drive. For £2,231.33, it just had to be our Pick of the month.

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