Dell Dimension V350

At its heart the Dimension V350 is a no-nonsense business machine, with integrated networking, modest card expansion and a core specification equal to any normal business task. It's not particularly ambitious, but it does boast two high-class peripherals in the form of an excellent Nokia monitor and a decent set of speakers that would be an asset to many setups.

In fact, the V350 bears a close resemblance to the Dimension XPS R350, which really is a home PC. In terms of hardware, however, the main difference between the two is that the V350 has a network adaptor instead of the modem supplied with the R350.

This machine comes in a small midi-tower case fitted with a tolerably quiet cooling fan. Access is quick and practical, and requires no tools: you loosen a thumbscrew and the side panel can be disengaged from the case proper and pulled away.

The Dell-badged keyboard is more substantial than some, but the medium-weight action feels slightly rough, the keys rattle a bit and the spacebar flaps around. It's accompanied by a Microsoft IntelliMouse, complete with the extra scroll wheel. The monitor is more important, though, and Dell deserves credit for including the Nokia-built Trinitron which it badges under its own name.

The Trinitron delivers a 15.6in diagonal from its 17in tube and has a decent set of digital OSD controls, combining plentiful geometry corrections with colour customisation. The picture is bright, flat and pleasingly sharp, and the tube has no trouble with an 85Hz vertical refresh at a resolution of 1,024 x 768. This is a monitor you can stare at all day without any undue suffering.

The V350 is surprisingly well endowed as far as audio features are concerned. It has a PCI Turtle Beach Montego sound card based on the Aureal Vortex processor, providing 64-voice wavetable synthesis and 3D spatialisation effects, which is arguably overkill for many offices - except for an after-dark deathmatch. The signal is converted into very convincing noise by the Altec Lansing ACS295 speakers, consisting of a beefy 20W subwoofer and two twin-cone stereo satellites. These will do very well, whether tasked with massive presentations or Massive Attack, and probably represent a threat to productivity as a result.

With the side off, the Dell's open, tidy build is evident - if you need to do anything to this machine the job won't be made harder by irritating impracticalities in the case design or general clutter. Business desktops don't generally need much in the way of card expansion, and Dell seems to have acknowledged this with an Intel-manufactured motherboard, with fewer slots than the usual. This leaves only two PCI and two ISA slots free, but a shared backplate cut-out means that no more than three cards can be added to the system.

Two of the three memory sockets are free, and there's plenty of space around them, so memory upgrades will be quick and pain-free. There's an internal 3.5in drive bay, in case the existing 6.4Gb hard disk isn't enough, and there are two more front-opening 3.5in bays and a single front-opening 5.25in bay free in the main stack.

With USB perhaps at last poised to become a practical reality, thanks to improved support in Windows 98, the fact that the machine has a pair of USB ports may be of relevance in a business context. What will certainly count in the office is the integrated Intel 82558 10/100Mbits/sec Fast Ethernet adaptor, which makes the V350 network-ready straight out of the box.

It's less easy to see where the 8Mb of graphics memory soldered on to the motherboard beside the ATi Rage Pro Turbo AGP graphics accelerator will come in to play unless, like the speakers, it sees more use after hours than during the working day. Perhaps Dell sees 3D graphics playing an increasing role in the business environment.