NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - With the Nasdaq trading at a level not seen since 1996, and P/Es way down, investors are surely wondering if -- finally! -- tech stocks are too cheap to pass up.

For example, Cisco Systems and Intel have P/Es of about 15 and 18, respectively, based on earnings estimates for 2003. That's down from March 2000, when Cisco commanded a P/E of 100 and Intel a P/E of 40. Even Post-It maker 3M -- about as boring as they come -- has a higher valuation, with a P/E of about 19.

But that doesn't exactly have investors chomping at the bit to buy Nasdaq-100 QQQ shares. "In the late 1990s and early 2000 nobody cared how high prices were and how high valuations got. Now, nobody cares how low they go," says Wendell Perkins, manager of the JohnsonFamily Large Cap Value and JohnsonFamily Small Cap Value funds.

One reason they're not tempted by seemingly low P/Es is the likelihood that earnings estimates for 2003 are still too high, given that there does not appear to be any evidence of a major rebound in corporate tech spending on the horizon.

For example, the consensus 2003 earnings estimate for Intel has steadily fallen this year from $1.05 on Jan. 1 to the current estimate of 75 cents. Intel arch-rival Advanced Micro Devices warned last week that its revenues would be lower than expected and blamed weak demand for personal computers. So what's to say that Intel's estimates won't have to be cut again in the near future?

Reasonable P/Es? High profile tech stocks don't trade at a premium to some of the stodgier stocks in the Dow anymore. Company  P/E*   Cisco Systems  15.4  Coca-Cola  25.4  DuPont  15.6  Intel  18.5  Microsoft  22.1  Oracle  18.3  Procter & Gamble  21.2  3M  18.8   * based on calendar year 2003 EPS estimates  Source:  FirstCall

The effect of options also has to be taken into account. Lately there has been more pressure on companies to disclose the impact of options expense on earnings. But companies such as Intel, Cisco and Microsoft have resisted calls to include the expensing of options on their income statement because doing so would dilute earnings. Current earnings estimates do not include options expenses. If they did, the earnings estimates would be lower and that would push up valuations. (For more about the earnings hit options expensing would have on tech stocks, click here.)

Plus, Cisco and Intel are still trading at a premium to the overall market, even though earnings in the tech sector have taken a bigger hit than the overall market. The S&P 500 trades at about 14 times 2003 earnings estimates.

So it might be time for investors to look for alternatives to the P/E ratio when trying to figure out how to value technology stocks. Noel DeDora, co-manager of the Fremont New Era Value fund, says that since technology companies are cyclical in nature, earnings tend to fluctuate wildly. That makes P/E ratios less reliable.

"For cyclical companies, it's very difficult to use earnings to value the stocks," says DeDora. He says when evaluating tech companies, particularly those that do not pay dividends, he looks more closely at price-to-sales ratios since revenues aren't as volatile as earnings and are less prone to accounting engineering.

Since profits are a function of revenue and costs, earnings often fall at a faster rate than revenue in a down market if a company does not cut costs enough to compensate for the revenue drop.

DeDora also prefers to look at results for the past twelve months as opposed to revenue estimates. "The estimates are never right," he says. This approach has led DeDora to some companies that you won't see in a typical value fund.

In fact, Cisco is one of them. Cisco currently trades at about 3.7 times trailing 12-month revenue. That's about 1.5 times higher than the average price-to-sales ratio for the S&P 500. But DeDora says that Cisco has tended to trade at a much higher premium to the market than this so that's why he thinks the stock is a value now.

So will it ever make sense to look at P/Es again? Perkins thinks P/E multiples will only become truly meaningful again once it is clear that there will be a sustained recovery in tech spending. So a stock like Cisco might be considered a good value at 15 times earnings estimates if there was any belief that tech spending will bounce back, he says.

But until that point, investors probably will continue to pay more attention to weak fundamentals than seemingly low valuations.