PC prices continue to fall and at each price point you can see better and better technology for your money. You can now get very worthwhile PCs for around £600 plus VAT. Although you have to watch for some corner-cutting, in particular heavily integrated system boards, you can still pick up a bargain if you know where to look.

The trend to building everything, particularly graphics and sound, into the main board within a PC makes them much quicker and cheaper to build and keeps the asking price down, but it has a down side, too. This type of board is aimed very much at the budget market and the specifications, especially those of the graphics chip, are often way behind those of even modest plug-in expansion cards. Worse, the Intel 810 chipset, the most common basis for today's integrated system boards, doesn't support a separate AGP expansion slot, so you can't plug in a better graphics card to upgrade the machine at a later date. So this is something to watch out for.

That said, PCs in this price range are well capable of most things you might throw at them, apart from the latest 3D games. For general-purpose home and small business use, they can be excellent value for money. Click the 'NEXT' link below to find out more.