NEC Powermate i-Select XL3A 1300

Let's get one thing straight right away - two-and-a-half grand is a lot of money. It'll get you a decent car, the holiday of a lifetime or a new kitchen. So why on earth would someone want to spend all that money on a PC? After all, you can pick one up for a lot less cash these days.

The Powermate i-Select XL3A 1300 provides you with rather more than an ordinary PC though. It's the first we've come across with DVD-R capability, which means you can use it to create your own DVD movies, for example.

Its arrival caused quite a stir although you'd be forgiven for thinking that it's just a posh version of what we've been doing with CDs for years. While this is true, DVD-R brings some key improvements.

The first advance is in capacity. Blank CDs typically hold 650Mb of data, which is enough for an hour of CD-quality music or 10 hours of perfectly adequate MP3 music. Blank DVDs can hold much more.

DVD-R discs have a capacity of 4.7Gb, which is more space than many people have free on their hard disk. Second, movies copied onto DVD-R can be played on most standalone DVD players or any PC DVDRom drive. This is the kind of universal compatibility that the format needs if it's going to catch on.

Unfortunately, the recordable DVD standard isn't yet established, so for now it is difficult to hunt down blank DVD-R discs and, when you find them, they are expensive - expect to pay about £30 to £40 for each one.

There are several competing standards aiming to be king of the DVDs, such as DVD-R and DVDRam. This is a bit like the VHS-Betamax videotape rivalry of the early 1980s. Complicating things further is the issue of re-recordable DVD drives and discs, which may soon be available in home PCs. It could be worth waiting for this development before investing your cash.

The Powermate is orientated towards the home entertainment-obsessed user. It has DVD creation software, a beefy 60Gb hard disk and a 21in monitor that shows films to fine effect. This is all well and good but the PC lacks a FireWire port which is an essential item for capturing video from a digital camcorder in order to edit it on a PC.

In other words, the huge hard disk and DVD-R drive that are ideal for making your own high-quality DVD movies are not as useful as they should be, since you can't get the footage onto the PC in the first place.

So to the rest of the PC. For this price we expected the machine to be very powerful and it didn't let us down. The AMD Athlon 1.3Ghz processor smashed records in our overall performance test and you will be hard-pressed to find many more powerful processors at the moment.

The PC also comes with a 64Mb GeForce3 graphics card - the newest, fastest and best of its kind. The graphics performance from this machine was superb; it's got enough power to cope with any gaming demand no matter how fast, busy or detailed the game is. The GeForce3 also provides big improvements in terms of realism; for example, in the subtlety of facial expressions.

The Labtec LCS-2632 speakers that come with the PC aren't as impressive. They are adequate but it's fair to expect more than just a pair of satellite speakers and a subwoofer for this kind of money. Given the PC's excellent gaming pedigree, the lack of surround-sound speakers to provide a more immersive gaming experience is disappointing.

The software bundle is decent, featuring Microsoft Word and Works 2000 and the Logitech webcam is welcome. So too is network capability and an external TV tuner, which allows you to use the sumptuous 21in monitor to watch EastEnders. Simply plug the TV aerial into one end of the tuner card and a USB cable carries the signal from the other end into the PC.

This is a good PC but the DVD-R capability pushes up the price and it should be on this issue that you make your buying decision. If the allure of being the first on the block to a have a DVD-R PC proves too strong, there's no doubt it will have the neighbours cooing in wonder and going green with envy.

There's no guarantee that DVD-R will be the universally accepted recordable standard but, since the discs can be played on regular DVD players, at least you won't end up with a useless drive should the smart money go elsewhere.

Contact: NEC
0870 010 6322
www.nec-online.co.uk

ALSO CONSIDER: Hi-Grade Ultis P4 1.7Ghz. A very good all-round system. £1761.