Take your fat, ugly beige boxes and cast them aside ladies and gentlemen, for they are so very passé. Why not try out this sexy little number from IBM?

NetVista X40i is the latest version of this designer model which was first released last year. On appearance alone, it's a real winner.

Slick-looking and compact, everything is housed entirely in a casing underneath the 15.1in TFT display. The monitor's picture quality is sharp and the 1024 x 768 resolution allows you a fair bit of room when working on-screen.

Thanks to its small footprint, the combined system/monitor leaves you with plenty of room on your desktop, which is ideal for those who prefer a compact alternative to the usual hulking case.

There is an IBM internet keyboard and colour-coded wheel mouse. It's a shame that neither is wireless, as it would have complemented NetVista's trendy look.

Unfortunately, the NetVista is not designed for upgrading and you can only get inside the machine by unscrewing the whole case. No free drive bays and no AGP or PCI slots are available, so you won't be able to add a new sound card, graphics card or CD-RW drive.

The graphics card is an onboard SiS 630 and it scored very badly in our labs test, so this really isn't a machine designed for gamers. The sound card is also onboard and the speakers are built in to the base of the monitor. The sound is adequate and there are three sockets for connecting headphones, a microphone and external speakers.

If you need to connect any sort of peripheral to the NetVista, then you have five USB ports from which to choose, two of which are taken up by the keyboard and mouse.

A free DIMM slot inside allows extra memory to be added but accessing it is tricky because the slot is hidden away inside. In this case, the present 128Mb memory will have to do. The system does have a 20Gb hard drive, so storage isn't a problem. Again, if you think you may want more memory, better graphics or any other upgrade, think twice before parting with your cash. This really is a machine for a home office or small business environment.

There is an integrated network card built in, so you can connect to a network of other office machines. This is useful for sharing a phone line, printer or scanner, and for gaining access to files. A modem is also tucked away tidily.

With regards to entertainment, there is a combined DVDRom and CDRom drive which drops down from underneath the monitor along with the floppy drive. This smart little design option means you can slot the drives away when not in use, keeping the sharp, slick lines of the computer that much cleaner. DVD movie performance is pretty good but suffers from the lack of a good sound card and speakers.

Overall, the NetVista is a sleek, convenient, virtually all-in-one computer. It's not a great choice for gamers or computer buffs but not bad for home office or small business users.

The price is a bit high for what you actually get, and there are certainly better systems available for office work, but they'd probably take up more room and would definitely not look as cool.

Contact: IBM
0800 169 1458
www.ibm.com/shop/uk