Datamation Announces Product of the Year Winners

With three of the 10 awards voted by readers, HP was the biggest winner in this year's contest. The company came out on top in the Client Systems/Laptop, Client Systems/Mobile and Server Hardware categories.

Desktop administration products specialist ScriptLogic copped two Datamation awards, in the Client Systems/Desktop and Network and Systems Software categories.

The HP Pavilion zd7000 series was the leading vote-getter in the Client Systems/Laptop category, winning a close contest over the runner-up, Apple Computer's Powerbook G4. (Author's disclosure: I purchased the HP zd7010 in January, though I didn't cast a vote.) Readers may have been impressed with the powerful desktop replacement's wide, 17-inch diameter screen, multimedia capabilities and built-in 802.11G wireless antenna. Other finalists in the laptop category were Dell's D600 Latitude, which finished a respectable third, and IBM's ThinkPad T40.

HP's iPAQ h5500 PDA ran away with the Client/Mobile award, more than doubling the vote count of second-place Palm Inc.'s Tungsten T2. Despite its steep price tag ($550-$600), readers liked the h5500's fast 400MHz processor and 128MB of RAM. Rounding out the list, finalists in this category were Sprint's Treo 600 and T-Mobile's Sidekick.

The third award for HP went to the company's ProLiant BL20p G2 server blade, which easily won in the Server Hardware category. The dual processor blade for enterprises features Intel Xeon processors, SAN storage capability and up to 8GB of PC2100 DDR memory. Finishing second in this group was Dell's PowerEdge 400SC, followed by IBM's eServer 325, Avocent Corp.'s DSR800 and Gateway's 860 NAS.

ScriptLogic's Desktop Authority desktop administration software edged runner-up Microsoft's Office Professional Edition 2003 in the Client Systems/Desktop category. Desktop Authority features a single, intuitive GUI-based management console that enables logon scripting, security policies and user profile management. The other finalists in this category were Stampede Technology's TurboGold Enterprise Edition and Altreia Solutions' Seavus Project Viewer.

Active Administrator, ScriptLogic's enterprise Active Directory management and auditing software, earned twice as many votes in the Network and Systems Software category as runner-up SilverBack Technologies' SilverBack 4.0 network monitoring software. Active Administrator gives network pros single-seat enterprise control over Active Directory security, as well as group policies. Other finalists in this group were eIQnetwork Inc.'s SysLogAnalyzer 2.0 and Symmetricom Inc.'s Domain Time II Audit Server.