Product Reviews

What is the Mesh Matrix? This month, it's the Chosen One, taking pride of place as this month's Best Buy award winner with an impressive list of quality specifications.

Features

There's no point spending £999 on a PC unless it will be able to expand and grow with you. The IBM Deskstar included with this PC is nice and large, with over 19Gb of capacity - so whether you want to load it with games or home video footage, you'll have plenty of space for some time to come. Mesh informed us, however, that this drive was coming to the end of its life, and an equivalent would be supplied. As with all the Labs PCs, the Mesh is DVD-ready with a Pioneer DVD-ROM drive that can fast-forward movies at up to 10-speed while existing software can be installed at a 40-speed CD-ROM rate. The Mesh is the only system to offer a CD-R/W drive, a flexible tool that can be used for a variety of tasks from creating music compilation CDs to backing up your data. It's a real benefit.

The graphics card sports an nVidia GeForce 256 chipset. This offers support for advanced lighting effects to enhance the latest games such as Quake III Arena. The audio hardware of the Matrix 700GDR does justice to the graphics. The Sound Blaster Live! card features hardware processing of Creative's EAX standard, which provides surround and reverb gaming effects, played to good effect through the Creative PC Works speakers. These four white satellite speakers provide 3.5W of power, rated in RMS (root mean squared) output - rather the meaningless 'Peak Music Power Output' (PMPO). The sub woofer provides another 10W. The sound is open and clear, excellent for games - those looking to take advantage of the sound card for musical purposes might want to specify a meatier-sounding set.

Ergonomics

Mitsubishi monitors are generally a cut above the rest of the herd. They're more expensive too, making the inclusion here of the Pro 720 a bargain in such a feature-packed system.

ADVERTISEMENT

It has an almost completely flat screen, which produces more natural looking images than conventional screens. The image is sharp, and offers excellent contrast. It's well-focused, with excellent geometry, so you won't be driven crazy by wavy lines at the corner of the screen. Adjustments can also be made fairly easily by using the on-screen display (OSD), which is controlled by four separate buttons. If you need to get more on screen at once, you can take advantage of its ability to operate at a resolution of 1280x1024 at a flicker-free 85Hz.

If you like to get at your applications quickly, you'll appreciate the Microsoft Internet keyboard, equipped with shortcut buttons taking you to the web browser and Windows calculator. It can also be customised for your individual applications. The Microsoft IntelliMouse is well made, its scrolling wheel making document navigation easier.

Expansion

Unless you're the type that likes to leave the lid of your system half-open, it'll be best not to upgrade too often, as several screws bolt down the lid of this case. There are two external bays, one 5.25in and one 3.5in, but you'll still need to get inside to make use of them. At least when you do get inside, things are neatly arranged. Clearly, this is a PC that's had care and attention put into it - unlike the Gateway, which was a mass of cabling and fans. The Mesh motherboard boasts a grand total of six PCI slots. The modem and sound card take up two of these, leaving four for future upgrades.

Performance

The Mesh put in a very good all-round performance, lagging in 3D only due to the fact that the graphics card made use of SDR (single data-rate) memory rather than DDR (double data-rate). However, considering the quality of the rest of the specification, this can be forgiven. The score of 3602 in 3DMark 2000, and 6270 in 3DMark 99 Max still make the Mesh excellent for gaming. Only if you really have to get as many frames per second as possible will you need a DDR GeForce machine.

Overall

Quality is the by-word where this Mesh machine is concerned, with a raft of first-rate components. Compromises are always necessary when you're on a budget, but these have been sensibly made. The system doesn't have extras such as a printer and scanner, but at least what's supplied is worth having. DVD and CD-R/W software has been included, along with Microsoft Works 2000 suite. If you're after a PC and you've got £999 to part with, the Mesh Matrix 700GDR is definitely the best way to spend it.