Product Reviews

Packard Bell's 1538 sits firmly in the mid-range category. However, our tests show that it isn't amazing value for money.

Its 512MB of RAM is a little stingy and the single DIMM means you don't get the benefit of dual-channel memory. The 3GHz Pentium 4 processor is similarly disappointing. It might have an attractive speed rating, but further investigation revealed it to be the budget 519 processor. This processor has less cache and no Hyper-Threading, which is annoying if you want to use your PC for processor-intensive tasks.

Unfortunately, corner-cutting is evident pretty much everywhere on the 1538. The nVidia GeForce 6200LE/TC PCI Express graphics card is a cut-down version of a card that's already a budget model, and it really shows. Its miserable performance

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in our 3D tests was due not only to its crippled specification but also to the fact that it supplements its 64MB of onboard memory with 192MB of main memory when it runs a 3D game.

The rest of the 1538's specification isn't quite as poor, but you could get far more for your money from any of the big mail-order suppliers. The 160GB hard disk is surprisingly large, but Packard Bell has made the bizarre decision to split it into two partitions: a too-small 30GB C: drive and a large 111GB D: drive. The use of Windows XP Media Center Edition is odd, but it means that you get the most from the TV tuner. This and the 56K modem occupy the only two PCI slots, so you'll need to throw out something to install anything else.

The Samsung 17" LCD is pretty good. While its image isn't the best we've seen, it is crisp, clear and fine for general Windows use. It sits very low on the desk, though, and there's no vertical adjustment. Its built-in speakers aren't much cop, either, but then neither are the ultra-cheap pair supplied. Worse still, the unbranded keyboard and mouse that Packard Bell has seen fit to include are truly awful. The featherweight keyboard has a horribly shallow action and the two-button mouse complete with ball is barely usable.

The 1538 is very expensive, and you can find much better deals from big mail-order companies.