A good, all round, machine
Written: May 04 '01
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Pros: Easy to set up, easy to run, fast, flexible.
Cons: Sound might be a little buggy.
The Bottom Line: A nice all-round machine for small business owner, or game player
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| doreiwolf's Full Review: IBM NetVista A40m (6831EAU) PC Desktop |
The NetVista is a matt black mini-tower with a 17 inch monitor, keyboard, and PS2 'wheel' mouse. It's a PIII, with 128Mb of memory (16Mb of which is shared with the on-board video), with 20Gig Hard drive, and 32x4x4 CD-RW.
I was able to simply plug it all together (made even easier by the colour coding of plugs and sockets, a nice touch) and turn it on. There was nothing else for me to do.
The combination of PIII, with 128Mb of RAM, 3D video and 16 bit sound makes it very useful for general home duties, internet surfing, or games. However to get on the internet you'll need to get a modem as the base model doesn't come with one it seems (Mine was included at no extra, but that may have just been the 'deal' I got).
The case opens very easily, yet the whole still felt strong and rugged. The lower hard drive frame unclips very easily, allowing easy addition of an extra drive. Though there is only one spare power lead. There's limited room inside the case to work, but everything is set out well enough to make working easy despite that.
For games it works well. Though the only 'new' game I've tried it with was Mechwarrior 4. For the older Thief, Thief II and Descent Freespace I had no problems and flawless 3d operation up to 1024x768 with 16 bits of colour. The only problem I did have that was occasionally a 'bluz' sound would appear in Thief or Thief II. Exiting and restarting the game fixed it, and it happened in no other game.
The computer feels fast enough for all the tasks I asked of it. For the first time, I feel I have enough 'headroom' to load in all the applications I need at once.
The mouse and keyboard are both worthy of note. Instead of a 'wheel' the mouse has a pressure rocker. The harder you press, the faster the scrolling goes. With just a little practice, I found you could achieve a good level of control. They keyboard has volume and CD controls in the top right, as well as 8 programmable keys along the top above the function keys. For a touch typist, the keyboard response is very positive.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 1,410
Operating System: Windows
Processor: Intel Pentium III
Processor speed: 601-700
RAM: 128
Internal Storage: CD-RW
Hard Drive (GB): 13-20
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Epinions.com ID:
doreiwolf
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Location: Australia
Reviews written: 53
Trusted by: 9 members
About Me:
Computer geek, Star Wars nut, toy freak, interested in religion, ancient civilisations.
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