New 5-Megapixel Cameras Aim High
Freelance writers Richard Jantz, Dan Littman, Mick Lockey, and Carla Thornton, and PC World editors Eric Butterfield, Tracey Capen, Sean Captain, Rebecca Freed, Alexandra Krasne, Kalpana Narayana-murthi, Melissa Perenson, and Alan Stafford contributed to the Top 100 section this month. Ulrike Diehlmann, Julio Giannobile, Elliott Kirschling, Jeff Kuta, Tony K. Leung, and Thomas Luong of the PC World Test Center performed testing on the products reviewed in this section, with logistical support provided by Julian Weatherby.
Nearly every digital camera vendor offers a 5-megapixel model (as shown by the abundance of them on this month's Top 10 Digital Cameras chart), but new, ultrasophisticated units from Canon, Nikon, and Sony have controls--such as the Canon PowerShot G5's ability to set flash level manually--you won't find on lesser breeds.
The multifunction devices on this month's Top 5 Printers chart don't cause the same gee-whiz response, but they can give your small office printing, scanning, and faxing functions for a low price. Next month: Read about the latest graphics boards on our Top 100 spotlight chart.
Your Guide to the Top 100
Each month, we test a large number of PCs, printers, monitors, and other products. Only the best products land on the charts, which are refreshed monthly.
Configurations are shown as tested. The overall rating for each product is calculated on a 100-point scale and reflects results from our hands-on evaluations and performance tests. A 90-point score is exceptional, while one in the 70s is above average.
For desktops and notebooks, the PC WorldBench 4 score is a measure of how fast a PC can run a mix of common business applications as compared with our baseline machine, a Gateway Select 1200 with a 1.2-GHz Athlon processor, 128MB of PC133 SDRAM, and a 20GB hard drive. For example, a PC that scores 120 is 20 percent faster than the baseline system. The support policies score is based on vendor support policies (not shown on charts). Click here for additional details on how we compile charts for the Top 100.