DVD Daughter card?........................
computers.com
Snapshot
The best sound and vision package since David Bowie's Sound + Vision Enhanced CD box set, the Dell Dimension XPS D333 (DVD) is a great choice for video hounds.
Review
Don't take the above snapshot the wrong way: the Dimension makes a great home computer overall. It has the best game scores by a hair, and even though it came in fifth in our business app test, the machine still lagged only 2.5 percent behind the winner. But the accent is on multimedia. Dell went hog-wild with our review system: second-generation DVD, USB-managed speakers, and a 9.1GB, 7,200 rpm hard drive. Amazingly, you get all this and a 17-inch monitor for less than $3,000.
Dell offers superior audio and video in a finely crafted machine. The 4MB STB Velocity 128 graphics accelerator comes with an MPEG-2 daughtercard for decoding DVD video; even with today's high processor speed, you need dedicated hardware for smooth video decoding. A second-generation DVD-ROM drive ensures compatibility for reading all CD formats, and a Trinitron monitor makes viewing movies on a monitor a pleasure.
But how good is a movie experience without great sound? Dell answers with a superb three-piece set of USB-managed Altec Lansing 495 speakers. The speakers use the USB interface not to transmit the audio signal, but to let you set levels for left, right, front, back, center, and subwoofer. A flywheel and buttons on the right satellite speaker work with software to let you select and adjust individual settings. However, the software loads at launch so it has a slight impact on performance--about four percent in our tests.
Dell will pre-install Internet Explorer 4.0 on your machine, letting you (among other things) take better advantage of Dell's proactive Internet service and support. Because this review emphasizes performance, we opted to go without IE 4.0; the browser slows performance by about three percent (we also uninstalled the speaker management software). In addition, the 9.1GB Seagate hard drive normally comes formatted under FAT32 so users can access the drive's full capacity as one drive letter (FAT16 has a 2GB partition size limit). But the older FAT16 holds a slight performance advantage, so we evened the playing field by testing all machines with FAT16.
The software bundle is basic. You have the option of selecting either Microsoft Office 97 Small Business Edition or Home Essentials 98; we'd appreciate a second complimentary choice of CD-ROM (or DVD, for this system) titles, like Gateway and Micron offer. Homey touches such as quick-launch buttons would also be appreciated--or better still, a remote control for the true home-theater feel. Overall, this is a good choice for the technology enthusiast, but not for the masses. |
