Product Reviews

Computer Buyer met the Jadetec MicroPC's predecessor back in July 2001, and we were impressed with it. This version is slightly bigger, measuring just over the height of six CD jewel cases, but that's still rather impressive considering the fact that it now contains a Pentium 4 processor. The model we looked at was running Windows 2000, but a Windows XP model is available for the same price.

The MicroPC4 is a feat of design and miniaturisation. It even contains an internal CD-ROM drive. But it's not very pretty, and the build quality is a bit suspect - one its feet fell off when I moved it.

Despite its compactness, the MicroPC4 positively bristles with ports and connectors. The two USB sockets on the front are standard USB 1.1, but the two at the rear are of the latest USB 2.0 type, which operates up to 40 times faster. The Jadetec is also equipped with FireWire - as used for hooking up DV camcorders. With an eye to supporting older devices, there are also parallel and serial ports around the back.

While PCs are often lauded as the future of home entertainment, most of us would balk at the prospect of having a PC in our lounge. They're just too big, ugly and noisy. But the Jadetec is small enough to go unnoticed, and if you upgrade to a DVD drive for another £95, you could hook up to a TV via S-Video and use the Jadetec instead of a domestic DVD player. As it has a co-axial digital out, you can also hook it up to a home cinema receiver and enjoy full surround sound.

Your popcorn scoffing

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could be interrupted, though. The MicroPC4 does have a fairly noisy cooling fan.

For more serious applications, you could add a wireless network card via the machine's PC Card slot and pass files around your home network without tripping over cables. There's also a built-in Fast Ethernet port for conventional wired networking. Want more? The Jadetec has a second Ethernet port, running at 1Gbit/s - 10 times faster than Fast Ethernet.

The only new technology the MicroPC4 doesn't have is Bluetooth - though this could be added via a PC Card or USB adaptor. It does, however, include infra-red which automatically activated itself when we placed another infra-red equipped notebook nearby.

Having such a PC in the lounge would be no good if you used a standard cable-trailing keyboard and mouse. Instead Jadetec supplies a wireless keyboard that has an integrated mouse and a number of dedicated keys for controlling media players.

The updated MicroPC4 is based on a 1.7GHz Pentium 4, doubling the raw megahertz of the last machine. It's equipped with 256Mb of DDR memory and has a second DIMM slot free for upgrades, though this is a little fiddly to get to. The graphics chip integrated into the SiS motherboard steals some system memory and isn't the greatest performer in the world, propelling the MicroPC to a score of just 902 in 3DMark 2001. This isn't disastrous, but it does mean the MicroPC4 is not a serious games machine. Its score of 537 in our new 2D benchmarks isn't amazing either - you can get PCs with twice this performance for the same price.

The storage capacity of this entry-level model is 40Gb, which is a reasonable amount - but the disk, with a spin speed of 5,200rpm, is a bit on the slow side.

The MicroPC4 is a impressive little machine, ideal as a server, a small system box for the lounge or a space-saving office PC. You can certainly get more for your money (such as a monitor) with a conventional system, but this machine isn't about speed, value, expansion and all the rest. It's about miniaturisation. So if you want a really petite PC, here it is!