Evesham Axis 2600+ MKR

The general rule of thumb when considering a new PC is that £1,000 is the optimum amount to spend. At this level, you avoid the high premiums associated with buying top-of-the-range components while only sacrificing a small amount of power.

The Evesham Axis 2600+ MKR adheres to this rule. The AMD Athlon 2600+ processor (which actually runs at 2.08GHz), is nippy enough to handle a lot of data crunching and won't struggle to run any applications. This is backed up by a generous 512Mb of memory, which makes Windows XP Home a much more comfortable experience. The final piece in the performance jigsaw is the 128Mb ATI Radeon 9600 graphics card. This is one of ATI's latest offerings and provides DirectX 9 support to play the latest games, as well as robust performance. All of our system tests showed that this is a PC ready to cope with any task.

The rest of the Axis 2600+ doesn't let the side down either. Perhaps the most impressive part of the system is the large 17in Philips TFT screen. Running at a native resolution of 1280 x 1024, this monitor has an outstanding picture quality and helps you get the most from the graphics card by running games at a higher quality setting.

Evesham has plumped for a set of Creative 5.1 speakers for the Axis. Always a popular choice, these are stylish, compact, and make your games and DVD movies sound superb.

Although the build quality of the PC is good, it is a bit imposing and not very subtle. The case has changeable fronts, similar in concept to a Nokia mobile phone. Evesham provides two different fronts in the box and you get a choice of colour when you buy the PC. However, the covers are a little clumsy and can be difficult to remove. They also rattle when the computer is turned on, making the PC a lot noisier than it need be. To jazz the appearance up further Evesham has added the ever-popular blue light to the front.

The large case does mean that you get tons of ports for hooking up extra peripherals, such as scanners, printers and even digital camcorders. If video editing is something that you want to take up, then the large 120Gb hard disk makes this a good PC to start with. Once you have created your magnum opus you can record the results to a DVD using the provided DVD-RW drive and send the results to your friends.

In case you are not ready to move to DVD, there is also a CD-RW drive. This might seem extraneous, as the DVD recorder can also write CDs, but the current range of DVD drives are very slow when it comes to dealing with CDs.

Unfortunately, you don't get a great deal of software with the Axis 2600+ and Evesham only provides DVD playback software, Ulead Video Studio and Ability Office, as opposed to the superior Microsoft Works Suite 2003. However, this is a well-rounded PC that comes with everything you need.

Contact: Evesham 0870 160 9500
www.evesham.com