Here is my review of my latest toy. I tend to use a laptop for every day use and decided to get a desktop mainly as a second PC for the kids to use. My purchase choice was purely cost driven as the PC was not being used as a main unit. By today's standards this particular model is not by any means the most advanced in term of specifications but as they say...You get what you pay for. I will run through the various features of the machine and try to explain how I personally have found them to perform.
CPU (processor) ############## The PC is fitted with a Celeron D360 CPU. The trend for new PC's now is to fit Dual Core processors, which to be fair do operate a lot more efficiently. However The D360 fitted is a single core processor rated at 3.46Ghz During actual use, the Celeron does appear to function quite well and has no problem with handling any application thrown at it.
RAM (memory) ############# Again the memory fitted as standard is reflected in the purchase price. Although the newer type of DDR2 is fitted is only 512Mb.
To date I have not upgraded this, but to my surprise I have not had any problems with the PC locking up or significant lagging. It is possible if required to upgrade the memory up to 2Gb, this is actually a relatively cheap upgrade option if you shop around.
GRAPHICS ########### The PC is fitted with an on-board Intel graphics GMA3000. I have to say that for an on-board graphics card, this does perform exceptionally well. As with most on board graphics cards, a proportion of the main RAM is assigned to the graphics card. This is where this particular card tend to come into its own. With most cards the maximum amount of memory assignable is either 64mb or at best 128mb. The Intel card however allows up to 384Mb of allocated graphics memory. The end result is that gaming or DVD playback on this machine is no problem whatsoever and provides superb display results.
MONITOR ######### A word of caution here! If shopping on line, most web sites show these PC's with a monitor. It should be noted that this is one of those "Serving Suggestions" you see on packets of food. These PC's are sold as a base unit only, the monitor is NOT included in the price. There is a plus side to this however, as monitors can generally be picked up for lower prices from the likes of E-bay. I personally purchased a 19" TFT screen, in conjunction with the superb graphics card, the display is nothing less than A1.
AUDIO ###### Again the sound card is "On-Board". For the price I was expecting a standard 2.1 or 5.1 card. To my surprise the card built in is offers 7.1 surround. Admittedly the sound quality depends to a large extent on the quality of the speakers connected. Having said that the speakers I connected are nothing special, in fact they are a cheapo set I picked up from Argos. The actual sound produced though despite this is very good. Basically the combination of sound and graphics cards supplied with this PC, do make it a very good priced media centre.
STORAGE ######### Fitted as standard is an 80Gb Hard Drive. The drive again uses the newer SATA interface rather than the older IDE type. In terms of accessing the drive, I must say that I have noticed an increase in speed for both reading and writing to the drive. This is particularly noticeable in the time it takes for the PC to be ready when first starting up. The faster speeds are also noticeable when performing de fragmentation and virus scans.
OPTICAL ######## The PC is fitted with a DVD Writer. This is useful if you want to use the PC for editing your own home movies, however before attempting this a memory upgrade would be a must. I have used the DVD writer for doing a back up of the PC, the write speed was very favourable.
DESIGN ######## The general design of the PC itself is quite good. The tower itself has a good solid feel to and has the appearance of being built to last. A useful design on the tower is the location of the additional ports. A lot of PC tower manufacturers have a nasty habit of locating the USB ports towards the bottom of the case. This is all very well if your tower sits on top of the desk. However, the majority of PC desks are designed to locate the tower underneath. The problem with having the USB ports at the bottom of the case means that you are then crawling on hands and knees every time you want to plug something in. The Acer case however has both 4 USB ports and the Mic / headphone sockets located more towards the centre. This makes a lot easier whether the tower is located above or below desk.
SOFTWARE ########## The PC comes pre-loaded with Windows XP. This is again a reflection on the price paid. If required however, the PC is fully Vista ready. Although the PC will run Vista without any hardware upgrades necessary, a memory upgrade would be highly recommended. As it stands the PC just meets the basic specification required for Vista. Additional software includes NTI for burning a variety of CD formats, and Power DVD. Also supplied is Norton Anti-virus, however this is only a limited time edition and you will be required to pay to renew subscription after a six month period. Personally although Norton has improved slightly, it is still a very resource hungry piece of software and there are other better programmes on the market. Having said that it's free for six months so you may as well use it.
EXTRAS ####### Although there is no monitor supplied with the PC, it does come supplied with a keyboard and mouse. Whilst the mouse is nothing to shout about, (more like something you would pay a fiver for out of Tesco) the keyboard is not to bad. Again because of the price it is not exactly Microsoft standards but it does the job and does have some useful quick launch multi-media keys.
MY OPINION ########### This is hardly a top of the range PC, but for the price (I paid just under £270 from Dabbs.com delivered) you do get a well built, and semi decent spec PC. Considering the lower spec of the PC it does perform surprisingly well. If you are looking for a more media based PC but don't want to pay over the odds, then this would be well worth the investment.
Processor Celeron D 360 3.466 GHz Memory Type DDRII Memory Installed. 512 MB Maximum Memory Capacity. 2 GB Hard Disk Capacity 80 GB Optical Storage DVD-RW Slots - PCI 2 x PCI PCI-Express 1 x PCI Express X16 1 x PCI Express X1 Bays - 3.5 6 x 3.5" drive bays Bays - 5.25 2 x 5.25" drive bays Network 10/100/1000 base TX Ethernet controller Audio HD audio USB Ports 8 x USB Serial Ports 1 x Serial Parallel Ports 1 x Parallel PS/2 Ports (Keyboard,Mouse) 2 x PS/2 VGA Ports 1 x VGA Audio Ports 6 x Audio output RJ 45 1 x RJ45 Height 370 mm (14.57 inches) Width 183 mm (7.20 inches) Depth 455 mm (17.91 inches) Power Supply 250 W
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So much information! Excellent review. I have an Acer laptop and find that they are the cheaper option but have never had any problems with the brand at all. C
Nov 20th, 2007
exceptional by (28%):
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