IBM NetVista A40i 2284 - Duron 600 MHz

Author's product rating:   

Speed	Fast
Design	Excellent
Manufacturer Support	Excellent
Ease of use	Very easy
Value For Money	Excellent

Advantages:	IBM reputation, support, quality, Duron CPU, 200Mhz motherboard, 4X AGP slot, software package
Disadvantages:	No matter how much you dislike to be seen in Comet, I think they are the only ones selling it .  No paper manuals

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

'IBM' and 'low price' have not really sat very happily in the same sentence and certainly not the three words 'IBM' 'low price' AND Comet - which is not known for low prices, and where I acquired mine. But Comet are (unusually) selling, as of writing, an IBM NetVista system for less than £500 with 15" monitor, and £375 without the monitor.

I initially thought they had priced it wrong! Anyhow, I took the package without the monitor for a penny under £375, that's cheaper than many 'kit' computers and lesser brands. Exact IBM model number is a 2284-12g (the 12g signifies its the model without the 15" screen)

HARDWARE: >
The smart, (sexy) dark graphite corporate looking TOWER case houses a 600 Mhz AMD Duron processor which is highly rated in Ciao and in the PC press in general. Cutting the story short, it slaughters the Celeron which usually only runs on a 66Mhz board and is more or less the same thing as an AMD Thunderbird but with less cache.

It comes with Via KT-133 chipset motherboard (same as used on Athlon Thunderbird systems!) that has a 200 Mhz front side bus, UDMA66 controller, 64Mb of PC 133 RAM, 10 Gb hard disk (5600 rpm), and unusually for a 'budget' machine it has a SEPARATE 4X AGP slot which houses a Diamond Stealth S3 Savage4 8Mb card, (none of this onboard video business which shares it's video memory with the main memory, - this slows a system up).

Other components are a 56k modem, 48x CD, 3 RAM slots, 3 PCI and 4 USB ports. Then it's the usual VGA, printer, games, speaker, mic ports. The speakers look and sound reasonable too, though lack a bit of bass.

The keyboard is internet enabled and has programmable buttons for one touch access to your favourite sites, and sports CD player and volume controls so you don't have to use the screen interface.

SOFTWARE: >
It ships with Windows ME, Lotus Smartsuite, FIFA 2000, and Norton AntiVirus to keep the bugs at bay. IBM have a handy restore CD so if you have problems, it will automatically restore the hard disk to it's original state, no fumbling about with Windows and driver disks (as in the case for 'kit' machines which have drivers from different companies to contend with) - this makes reinstallation a breeze.

IBM's software update function makes it easy to ensure your machine has the latest patches or updates and works by automatically submitting your machine information to IBM (requires an internet connection) and then ascertains if you have the latest updates or not. If not, it lists the options you can download, and it installs it automatically in the right place...EASY LIFE!

As I said, I paid £375 for a quality IBM machine, with the backing of IBM support (telephone and online). I reckon even if you looked for the cheapest components yourself and did a DIY kit machine, or ordered a built to order machine you would be hard pushed to come up with the goods for £375....that is unless you leave out the software, but that's naughty! (Your machine still needs an OS such as Windows ME)

DOCUMENTATION: >
None...I thought they forgot to include it! No hardware specs either, I had to find out from the IBM website. To keep costs low, the documentation / manual is on the hard disk or available online, which is a bit of a problem is you can't start up your machine!

IN USE: >
Thanks to the 200Mhz front side bus, PC 133 RAM and Duron 600Mhz processor it feels very zippy compared to my older Celeron 366Mhz on a 66Mhz motherboard, UDMA 33 with PC 66Mhz RAM. I sloted in an extra 128Mb of RAM and it felt even faster. I'd say put in more RAM if you a bit more punch, - as I suspect Windows ME's overhead is quite great compared to 98.

UPGRADE: >
I also put in a 46 Gb IBM UDMA 100 7200 rpm hard disk (although the controller only goes to UDMA66) which also speeds things up over the original 5600 RPM hard disk. My total extra expenditure on RAM and HD was £40 + £129 = £169 bringing my total cost to £544 total. So now I have 192Mb RAM and 56Mb of hard disk, with additional scope later to add a real powerful 4X AGP graphics card (which you cannot do with integrated on board video. The motherboard can supposedly support Duron CPU's up to 1 Gig, so when the time comes for another speed boast, there is provision to slot a faster one in. (Fastest Duron at the moment is 850Mhz). I also think the motherboard can handle Thunderbirds up to 1 gig but the power supply needs to be upgraded..but that's going off the track somewhat, and shouldn't be done before your warranty runs out!

SUMMARY: >
If you were thinking of buying a second hand / refurb PII machine for £300 pounds or ordering from a dodgey unknown build to order company, well for a few more pounds you can have brand new! Although it has a budget price tag, it has decent performance and a reasonable upgrade path due to the AMD Duron and the motherboard. One to consider amongst the HP, Toshiba, Daewoo, and E-machines of this world which all have models pitched at the £499 mark.