NEC PowerMate ML7

PC Pro's A-List slot for business PCs has been a busy place of late, with Dell, HP and NEC all vying for supremacy. Dell took over the A List last month with its excellent GX620 USFF, but NEC wants its crown back and a number of changes have been made to the ML7 that we first saw in April.

There's still the older 915 chipset, but the old 5-series Pentium 4 has been replaced by the 3GHz Pentium 4 630. The clock speed is the same, but Intel's SpeedStep technology should ensure lower power consumption, less heat and less noise. The newer processor helped the ML7 to a respectable benchmark score of 1.75. While this isn't a machine for serious number-crunching, it felt perfectly responsive performing complex Office and Windows tasks. There's still 1GB of RAM, but the hard disk has been bumped up from 120GB to 160GB. The aesthetics have been changed too - the drab beige tones of the original machine have been ditched in favour of a more muted black-and-silver chassis.

The chassis itself is unchanged. Mountable either on its end or on its side, it isn't as slim as the Dell GX620 USFF, but it's undeniably thin: mounted as a tower unit it's just 9.5cm wide. It's also easy to work on, with the front sliding off and the disk assembly - holding the optical drive, hard disk and floppy drive - flipping up to allow easy access to the motherboard. This has two free DIMM slots and three free SATA ports, although the latter are of limited use as the ML7 lacks any spare 3.5in drive bays.

Security is a hot topic for business PCs, and the NEC misses out slightly as there's no option for a Trusted Platform Module. While this doesn't represent a massive stumbling block at the moment, it may become more significant in the future. The physical security of the chassis is ensured by a padlock lug on the back, as well as a BIOS-based chassis-intrusion alert, which will optionally stop the machine POSTing after the case has been opened and closed.

The TFT accompanying the ML7 is still the NEC 1770NX, but this is no bad thing - considering it's a panel that retails for about £230, it's a welcome addition to such a cheap PC. Horizontal viewing angles aren't perfect, but the small bezel and overall styling lend it a professional look. It's also crisp and evenly lit, both of which make it easy on the eyes during extended periods of use. Very bright images revealed a slight lack of contrast, but we really appreciated the pivoting base and the adjustable height and tilt, which mean you'll be able to get comfortable with it no matter how high your desk. The monitor has both D-SUB and DVI inputs, the latter of which connects to the half-height X300. It's an unusual move, as NEC could have saved money by using the D-SUB output from the onboard GPU, but a very welcome one: digital connections make it much easier to set up displays correctly.

The ergonomics of the mouse and keyboard are slightly less impressive; the keyboard in particular has very stiff keys, which means slightly more pressure than normal was needed during typing. The mouse has a budget feel to it too, but at least there's a wheel for quicker navigation, and it's also optical.

We were pleased to see a DVD writer that writes to every format including dual-layer +R discs. We also appreciate the roomy 160GB hard disk: no matter how the PC is used, office workers will struggle to run out of this much disk space. Network-based backups are no problem either, thanks to the onboard Gigabit Ethernet chip.

The ML7 is bundled with Microsoft Works 7, which, although not the latest version, will nonetheless be enough for secretarial or basic administrative tasks. But far more important is the three-year next-business-day on-site warranty, which is a great inclusion for a PC at this price.