Product Reviews

If putting together your newly-purchased PC is the kind of prospect that sends shivers down your spine, the setup guide that appears as you open the Evesham should provide at least a modicum of comfort.

Features

Even though it's been around for some months now, nVidia's GeForce is still the most fully-featured and speedy graphics chipset around, so Evesham does well to include it. The graphics card it sits on is the 32Mb Guillemot 3D Prophet, which also includes a TV-out. This can be used to watch films on your telly, played via the Pioneer DVD-ROM drive. You can never have too much storage, and thanks to the 20Gb supplied by the Evesham's Maxtor hard disk, you'll be able to feel smug as you choose the full install option of that huge office suite. The sound card is a Creative Sound Blaster 128. It's not as good as the Player 1024, but it does have two line-outs to support four speakers, and can play back DirectSound 3D effects, part of the Microsoft's DirectX standard. Sadly, you only get a twin set of speakers, but at least the Creative CBS52s manage a reasonable volume before they distort. The modem is a branded Diamond SupraExpress, rather than the no-name device normally shipped with machines.

Ergonomics

Because they use the same type of connector, it's possible to plug in the keyboard and mouse the wrong way round. To avoid confusion, Evesham's are usefully colour-coded. The keyboard has the word 'Ergonomic' printed on the front, which often refers to a split keyboard, designed for touch-typists. This one merely has a wrist rest attached on the front. However, it's better than nothing - and it does help to make typing more comfortable, though the keyboard itself has a somewhat sticky action. Logitech makes the mouse, which has two main buttons, with the scrolling wheel doubling up as a third. The Vibrant VM71RDA monitor is not exceptional, but does

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the job it's intended for, producing a satisfactory 85Hz refresh at 1024x768. It's a shadow mask monitor, which means a metal plate with holes in lets electrons through to illuminate the screen. This design tends not to produce as bright a picture as aperture grille displays. However, the advantage of shadow mask tubes is that they don't have the thin lines running across the screen that Trinitrons by necessity do. The Evesham's motherboard has a small array of LED lights. This is a discreet but useful feature that can help you diagnose problems in the event of a system failure. If you do need to get inside the Evesham, you'll need a screwdriver to hand. This isn't the most convenient method of entry, but at least the case is hardy, and about as smart as a beige PC box is going to get. The Evesham software package included the pre-loaded Adaptec Go Back utility that restores Windows to an earlier state of working order, in the event of rogue programs causing errors.

Expansion

The Evesham PC offers a decent amount of expansion, with four of its six PCI slots free for use. ISA slots are still found inside most PCs, and there's one present here. As with most PCs, there are two out of three DIMM slots empty. However, as Evesham has only supplied 64Mb memory, these are likely to be needed.

Performance

Evesham's managed to shake off some poor performance showings of recent months to produce a system, which in 3D at least, displays an astonishing turn of speed. It produced a huge 6430 in 3DMark99 Max. This is mainly down to its GeForce graphics card, which lifts the Evesham head and shoulders above PCs based on anything else. In 3DMark 2000 the Evesham was beaten for the top spot by the similarly equipped Compute-IT, but only by a very narrow margin. The machine's 2D score of 2254 is average. This demonstrates that the software driver for GeForce has been optimised for 3D, but is still more than enough power for 2D applications.

Conclusion

The Evesham PC has all the components of a great-value PC, and has them in abundance - namely plenty of hard disk space, a stonking graphics card, and useable software. Compute-IT's machine runs the Evesham pretty close, packing in more memory and a superior motherboard.

But what swung it for the Evesham was its unassailable two-year on-site warranty, making up in customer service what it loses on the technical front. The Evesham is both a safe and a powerful choice.