Net-tops: small, affordable desktops.(FIRST LOOK)(Compaq Presario CQ2009F and Averatec D1130)(Product/service evaluation)

The same economies that have produced small, cheap netbooks are spawning a generation of small, cheap desktop computers: net-tops. We tried out two with very different designs:

Compaq Presario CQ2009F, $270. This sleek machine is the more traditional of the pair because it doesn't include a monitor or speakers. Its small case (9 1/2 x 10 x 4 1/2 inches) includes most of the connections you'd expect: four USB ports, dedicated wired keyboard and mouse connections, front-mounted mic and headphone jacks, a slot for almost any digital camera memory-card format (except Compact Flash), and an Ethernet and modem port. There's also a DVD burner.

Inside, the Presario looked like a budget desktop from three years ago, with a 160-gigabyte hard drive, 1GB of RAM (upgradable to 2GB), and Windows XP Home. It also performed like a budget desktop from 2006. That is, it choked while running CPU-crunching games and applications but did a more-than-adequate job tackling word processing, e-mail, Web surfing, and many of the other routine tasks of home computing. There's no spare drive bay, so for more storage you'll need an external drive. The keyboard was somewhat cramped.

Bottom line. This Presario is small and inexpensive, but for a little more, you can get a far more capable ...