Compaq Evo D500

Take a look at the top-floor executive's office. Note the large mahogany desk with its executive toys and the shelves with colour-coded books and ornaments - there may even be tropical fish somewhere. This is exactly the sort of place where you don't want an enormous beige box sticking out like a sore thumb, and this is where a PC like the Compaq Evo D500 comes into its own. Its flashy black and silver finish will happily sit alongside a Newton's cradle executive toy without colour clashes, and it even utilises a 1.7GHz Pentium 4 to offer fast performance too.

Or so you might think. Give or take a couple of exceptions, the Pentium 4 has yet to really prove itself as an outstanding performer on the desktop, and this is exemplified by the Evo's overall 2D benchmark score of 2.93. In fact, this is even behind the 1GHz Pentium III-based Dell OptiPlex GX150 (see Labs, issue 85, p70), which scored 3.13. That said, this is the fastest of all the business machines reviewed this issue, putting the Evo ahead of HP's e-pc 40 (see opposite) and Acer's Veriton 3300 (see p149).

But a PC like the Evo isn't bought for cutting-edge performance; after all, its speed is more than adequate for word-processing and office applications, plus a bit more. It also has 16Mb of dedicated graphics memory with the Nvidia TNT2 Vanta graphics card, which could cope with minimal 3D applications. However, the 3DMark2000 score of 1,016 at 1,024 x 768 in 32-bit colour puts the emphasis on the word minimal.

What the Evo really has in its favour is the superb level of support offered. The D500 comes with a three-year on-site warranty, with a next-day response time that includes parts and labour. This is a great inclusion for the money and, along with the supplied Compaq support software, will ensure you're well covered when things go wrong.

Compaq's software installs two icons in the Control Panel - Compaq Diagnostics and Compaq Remote Diagnostics. There are options for a quick, complete or custom test, which runs a series of tests through all the key components and will diagnose what's going wrong without having to open the PC. Meanwhile, a series of buttons across the top will give you the exact details of everything inside.

If you do open up the Evo, you'll be pleasantly surprised by the flexibility offered. While you expect an array of upgrade options with a standard PC, it's not the same with a proprietary small form-factor box. But there are two DIMM sockets free for future memory upgrades, as well as two full-height PCI slots on a riser to add extra peripherals. It even has an AGP slot, although you'll need to track down a half-height AGP card in order to replace the graphics card.

The exterior is just as well thought out, with four USB ports (two on the front and two on the rear) for modern devices, as well as a parallel port and two serial ports for legacy office equipment. What's more, the keyboard and mouse connect to their own PS/2 ports, so all the USB ports are kept free.

There's no space for extra drives, but the 20Gb Seagate Barracuda Ultra ATA IV hard disk should see through the life of the machine. Despite being small in comparison to the 80Gb and 100Gb disks we've seen recently, you're unlikely to utilise the extra space unless you're a video-editing enthusiast.

As with the HP and Acer, no monitor is supplied as standard, although our review sample was supplied with a matching carbon-finish Compaq TFT5005 flat panel. It's a good enough monitor, although it lacks the pivot option on the HP L1510. It also adds an extra £399 to the cost, but it's worth considering if you don't already have a monitor and want the cream of the crop to start off with.