IBM NetVista X40

Network workstations are often unexciting but indispensable to the modern business. They're also needed in vast quantities, which explains why a company like IBM will spend a great deal of time and money coming up with the ideal example of this unassuming species of PC.

In fact, the first thing you notice about the NetVista is that it's more elegantly turned out than the run-of-the-mill workstation, and not without a practical dimension either. For a start, it's finished in a very dark shade of grey that almost looks black. This adds a certain chic, and if looks are important in particular areas of a business then it's worth remembering that black doesn't show grime or go yellow like a traditional beige box.

It's also incredibly compact. It stands as high as a typical 17in CRT monitor, but takes up noticeably less desk space, since it only measures approximately 280mm deep, rather than the 430mm or so you lose to a monitor. This has been managed by simply replacing the CRT with a TFT, and building the works into the back of the cabinet rather than boxing them in a separate system unit. The TFT panel has a 15in diagonal and a native resolution of 1,024 « 768, so it's the functional equivalent of a conventional 17in CRT. The display is also crisper, thanks to the TFT's unambiguous representation of pixels, and it was brightly illuminated by its sidelights, with a wide viewing angle for real-world working.

The resulting all-in-one machine is light enough to pick up with one hand - using the thoughtfully provided carrying handle - and it doesn't trail cables all over the place either. The mouse and keyboard connect via USB, although there are two PS/2 ports if needed, but that's it as far as legacy connectivity goes. There's no serial, no parallel and, understandably enough, no VGA. The NetVista has three more USB ports for other peripherals, but the implication is clear enough: it talks to the rest of the world through the office network. The hardware for doing this is integrated into the motherboard in the form of an IBM EtherJet 10/100BaseTX Ethernet controller, which is sufficient to cater for the majority of users' needs. But just in case, there are two low-profile PCI slots running vertically down the back of the cabinet, providing a modicum of expansion potential.

Otherwise, IBM's designers have done a reasonably good job on the maintenance access side of things. You only need to take out four screws to remove the back of the main cabinet. This reveals the hard disk, which can be replaced relatively easily. Next, there's aæperforated metal cover over the system board, which requires the removal of another four screws. Admittedly, clips might have been more appropriate, but with the infrequency of motherboard upgrades, this isn't an issue. At this point you can carry out a memory upgrade or replacement via the two DIMM sockets, or replace the CPU - or the entire motherboard itself. So, although the NetVista looks worryingly like the sealed box of the future, it's repairable. You'd also expect a one-piece build like this to have little internal airflow space, but IBM has worked out the heat management issues satisfactorily, and while you can hear the cooling fan running, it doesn't intrude.

Graphics processing is handled by the SiS motherboard chipset. It appropriates 16Mb of the machine's 128Mb of system memory for its own uses, but the remaining 112Mb should be enough for everyday office work. This graphics solution isn't designed for demanding tasks, but will cope with Microsoft Office without protest - all it's ever likely to be tasked with.