When I was looking around for a new PC I only went in PC World to get a feel for what sort of things were available. I would then look around the various other more reputable high street and on-line manufacturers before parting with my cash. I never thought that 2 hours later I'd be at home ... Read review
Advantages: A good all round system Disadvantages: DVD writer software
When I was looking around for a new PC I only went in PC World to get a feel for what sort of things were available. I would then look around the various other more reputable high street and on-line manufacturers before parting with my cash. I never thought that 2 hours later I'd be at home setting up this truly excellent machine.
This is what I got for £699:
Processor: Athlon 2600 XP+ (running at 1913 Mhz)
Memory: ... ...DVD-ROM plus separate DVD+ rewriter
Graphics: integrated Nforce2 Geforce 4 graphics
Screen: 17" Flat Panel monitor (free upgrade from 15")
Floppy drive: 1.44 MB
Software: Win XP (home), MS Works, Win DVD, Ahead Nero.
Modem: 56 kbps
Sound: integrated Nforce2 sound
Speakers: Stereo desktop
USB: 6-off USB2 ports (2 on front of case)
Other ports: 1 x serial, 1 x parallel, 1 x network, ... more
When I was looking around for a new PC I only went in PC World to get a feel for what sort of things were available. I would then look around the various other more reputable high street and on-line manufacturers before parting with my cash. I never thought that 2 hours later I'd be at home setting up this truly excellent machine.
This is what I got for £699:
Processor: Athlon 2600 XP+ (running at 1913 Mhz) Memory: 512 MB Hard Drive: 80 GB Optical Drives: DVD-ROM plus separate DVD+ rewriter Graphics: integrated Nforce2 Geforce 4 graphics Screen: 17" Flat Panel monitor (free upgrade from 15") Floppy drive: 1.44 MB Software: Win XP (home), MS Works, Win DVD, Ahead Nero. Modem: 56 kbps Sound: integrated Nforce2 sound Speakers: Stereo desktop USB: 6-off USB2 ports (2 on front of case) Other ports: 1 x serial, 1 x parallel, 1 x network, keyboard, PS2 mouse, speakers & microphone.
Plus on the day that I bought it I was offered 10% off anything else I bought at the same time as the PC plus interest free "buy now pay 12 months later" on everything I bought.
One of the big bonuses with the system (and the most obvious when people see it) is the monitor. A 17" flat panel is big! With a resolution of 1280 x 1024, the display is as clear as you could want and can be viewed from any angle; it doesn't suffer from the narrow field of viewing experienced with some early flat panel monitors.
Having upgraded from a 400 Mhz Celeron machine, you can guess that I was impressed by the speed of this system. It still impresses a month later. It's not the fastest available but it's certainly more than capable for the office, internet and digital photography applications I use most of the time. The integrated motherboard graphics and sound from the Nforce2 chipset cope perfectly adequately with the few games I have tried on it. The only thing that did trip me up is the complete lack of a 15-pin game port, so I had nowhere to plug in my trusty SideWinder gamepad ... roll on Christmas!
One thing I like about the sound setup is that although the 3 default jack plug connections are one stereo line out (to use with the supplied speakers), one stereo line in and one microphone, you can configure these such that the line in plug can be used for two rear speakers. This enabled me to dump the (perfectly capable but tinny sounding) speakers supplied with the PC and fit my Cambridge Soundworks 4.1 quadraphonic speakers with subwoofer. Nice.
Having sorted the speakers, CD playback (via Windows Media Player) and DVD playback (via the supplied WinDVD software) are now much more respectable.
My only other gripe is with the DVD writer and the burning software supplied. The writer is an NEC 1100A. As far as I can see there is no guidance supplied with the PC as to what blank media I needed to buy for this writer. Some reseearch on the internet revealed that this particular writer only writes to DVD+R or DVD+RW discs. For those who don't know, there are two main formats currently competing in the consumer market: DVD-R/DVD-RW and DVD+R/DVD+RW. Whilst both of these formats have similar capacities and speeds, the DVD-R/DVD-RW format is the one supported by the DVD forum (the group of manufacturers who define the DVD format) so it is conceivable that DVD+R/DVD+RW could fall by the wayside in the future (betamax, anybody?). Later DVD burners (eg the NEC 1300A) will write to both formats, but mine doesn't. Unusually, the blank media for DVD+R and DVD+RW discs seem to be cheaper, so I've bought a supply to see me through in case they do become unavailable.
That is, if I can ever write to any DVDs. The PC is supplied with Ahead Nero CD & DVD burning software. It's insistance on adhering to the Joliet filename format means that a lot of my digital photograph collection (where I include the date and a detailed description in the filename appended by a number if I take more than one photo of each subject) does not comply and would need renaming. I did not have this problem on my previous PC where I used Easy CD Creator to write to CD-R and CD-RW. I have ordered a copy of Easy CD & DVD Creator Platinum 6 and will let you know if I fair any better! *** UPDATE Roxio Easy CD & DVD Creator has solved all my CD & DVD problems ... Nero is history! ***
So with the exception of the merely adequate speakers, the lack of a game port (both minor complaints), the support for DVD+R/DVD+RW only (buy a spindle of each to avoid obsolescence) and the unusability of Ahead Nero (Easy CD & DVD Creator Platinum 6 available new for £27 inc P&P on Amazon UK Marketplace), this is a cracking system and well worth the price; the free upgrade to 17" flat panel and the interest free "buy now pay nothing for 12 months" really sold it for me.
My final word is on the PC World finance: if you don't pay it off in 12 months you will get clobbered with a huge penalty, effectively doubling the price of the PC, and then charged a princely APR on your monthly repayments on the whole amount (purchase price plus default penalty). So make sure you pay it off, even if it's only a day before the 12 months is up.
I lied. My final final word is on SETI: the processing time for a work unit on this PC is about 3.5 to 4 hours, which is pretty quick. If you'd like to try your hand at searching for extra-terrestrial intelligence, search for setiathome on any respectable search engine & download the screensaver.
