Gatchets & Gizmos: More PC, less $$$

As prices for low-end personal computers have dipped below $500, top-of-the-line machines, aimed mostly at game enthusiasts, have been getting less expensive, too. It's amazing what you can buy for

Friday, March 10th 2000, 12:00 am

By: News On 6

As prices for low-end personal computers have dipped below $500, top-of-the-line machines, aimed mostly at game enthusiasts, have been getting less expensive, too. It's amazing what you can buy for under $2,000 now.

Take the Acer Aspire 6400 series, which can be configured to order. Our test model came with a superfast 733-megahertz Intel Pentium III processor, a spacious 20-gigabyte hard drive, 128 megabytes of memory, a DVD drive, a 17-inch monitor and speakers -- all for about $1,950.

With the curvy shapes of the latest Aspire models, Acer -- the Taiwanese manufacturer that made a splash five years ago with black and emerald-hued PCs -- hasn't forgotten about design, either.

The company is ahead of the pack with its dependence on Universal Serial Bus ports, which its PCs use for connecting the keyboard, mouse and speakers. The 6400 models come with five USB ports in all, with two available after setup for expansion needs.

USB is great for plug-and-play convenience but it can be annoying. The speakers of our test model hummed with every movement of the mouse, likely the result of signal interference between the tightly configured USB ports on the back of the PC.

After a call to an Acer technician, I plugged the mouse into the USB port on the keyboard instead. The humming subsided enough that I only heard it when the house was completely quiet.

Call 1-800-368-2237 or see www.acer.com/aac/aspire.