Product Reviews

At the heart of the this PC lies a processor barely six months old: the Pentium 233MMX. Last July suppliers had only just got hold of what was then a new and exciting chip - and they certainly weren't going to sell you a Pentium 233MMX system for much less than £1,400. By November, the cost of a P233MMX PC had dropped dramatically to £899! And now, before you've even got comfortable writing 98 in the date, prices have plunged again. At just £699, such systems are half the price they were in July, and half the price of the Pentium IIs that Intel would like us to be buying.

At this price, you can't expect many frills, but other manufacturers features in our group test have produced some seriously well-specified machines, so how does the Carrera compare?

The case is a fairly handsome and robust mini-tower. Like most mini-towers it has two 5.25in drive bays and three 3.5in, one of each free, and both accessible from the front.

The motherboard is of AT layout, and carries three ISA slots beside the four PCI. There are the usual four SIMM sockets and two DIMM sockets for memory, one of which is filled with a 32Mb DIMM.

The internal cabling wasn't quite as neat as it could be, largely due to the connectors for the drives' ribbon cables being in the middle rather than at one edge of the board - at least the power cables were spiralled up neatly.

A look at the Carrera's drives quickly shows the machine's biggest flaw. The hard disk affects the speed of your PC at loading programs, browsing for files and retrieving data. And crucially, its size places an upper limit on how much stuff you can install on your PC. The Carrera's Crystal Max fails on both accounts - it is slow and 1.5Gb is small by current standards, with competitors offering disks of double this capacity. CD-ROM drives differ only in speed - and even there variations are slight. Again the Carrera falls behind with its LG CD-ROM drive that spins at up to 16 times audio CD speed, not 24 times as is typical these days.

Whe the PC was first switched on, Windows was set up to display in 1,024x768 resolution in 256 colours with an 85Hz vertical scan rate. The monitor wasn't at its most effective at this resolution - most 15-inchers work better at 800x600. The Carrera logo acted as Windows wallpaper, and a desktop icon offered a glossary of PC acronyms.

Although set in the correct time zone for UK use, the PC's system clock was an impressive 343 days, 17 hours and 37 minutes slow.

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Amazing. Hope they don't date-stamp their customer warranties like this.

If you will be doing a lot of typing, a good keyboard will improve your speed, accuracy, and enjoyment in your work. The Carrera's Keytronic keyboard is not at all bad. It makes no click, but at least the keys have a decently long travel, don't wobble and don't feel like cold custard. Sadly, it was set up for US use, which means Windows will sometimes produce the wrong symbols. The Mitsumi mouse is light, but fits adult hands well.

The 15in LG monitor supplied with the Carrera is a piece of quality kit. With a 15in screen that's bigger and flatter than the 14in models, visibility is much improved, particularly as the display is capable of much higher refresh rates and has a considerably wider range of adjustments. Our sample was never sure if it should display red or not, the sort of fault that guarantees are designed for. Adjustment is easy, and done using a button and a wheel. And with memory in the monitor, you need do it only once for each display mode.

The electronics driving it is ATI's 3D Charger, yet another graphics card built round the ATI 3D Rage II chipset offering superior quality, at a price that's just about attainable in a £699 system.

The Carrera's speakers pretty tiny, claiming an output of just 3W per channel. Not great, but just about adequate. The sound card is an ESS1869 which claims Sound Blaster compatibility and surround-sound. We've had problems with the first (though not in this PC) and can't really benefit from the latter without a better speaker rig.

Software comprises of ClarisWorks Office - effectively Claris-Works 5.0 with Internet add-ons. Not overly generous in quantity, but then for budget PCs, this is the first thing to go.

With most electronic goods you get a manual that tells you everything the device can do. Not so PCs. Many suppliers put next to no effort into manuals for two reasons: first, PCs are so complicated it is too time-consuming to do properly; second, as all PCs work roughly the same you can go out and buy a book anyway if you've no idea where to start. All manufacturers should supply the technical information on the components of their PCs that is needed to make informed upgrades. A few make some effort at a user guide, saving you a trip to the bookshop. Carrera included a light beginner's leaflet, enough to get the hardware set up right. This may prove vital for a lot of first-time buyers.

The performance of the eight PCs fetured in our group test (all of them being £699 233MMXs) were all pretty similar. However, the Carrera fell nearer the bottom of the pack, mainly due to its hard disk. The Maxtor 81620 proves that while Maxtor has made some brilliant disks, it is still quite capable of making mediocre ones.

While this PC sports some quality parts for a budget PC, particularly the monitor, it's all wasted on a hard drive that slows down the whole system and runs the risk of filling up all too quickly. When other manufacturers can get it right, the Carrera cannot be recommended.