Buying a PC is much like buying a car, a house or any other expensive purchase. Looking at the few key specifications is not enough to base a buying decision on.

You wouldn't buy a car if it had a big engine but no seats, and the same applies to PCs. It's easy to be blinded by a fast processor and end up ignoring shortcomings elsewhere in the system.

The first thing to look at when buying any PC is the key specification points: the processor, memory and hard disk. On the iXtreme, all of these are excellent.

The Intel Pentium 4 processor is the most powerful available and the 2.8GHz version is the fastest there is. That processor would be wasted without enough memory but with 512Mb of DDR memory installed, that is not the problem here.

The final part of the system jigsaw is the hard disk and it barely needs saying that with 120Gb of storage on board, hard disk capacity is not a problem. Nobody should be surprised either that the scores from our system tests were hugely impressive.

The rest of the PC looks pretty good too. A favourite way to cut corners on a PC with a hot processor is to fit an anaemic graphics card. Graphics cards are easily upgraded but the latest card can cost up to £350 so the one in a new PC shouldn't be overlooked. Packard Bell has ensured that isn't an issue by fitting a 128MB GeForce4 Ti 4600 graphics card.

Until very recently, this was the fastest on the market and consequently a good match for the rest of the specification. It is a dual-head card, which simplifies setting it up with two monitors, while the S-video port is ideal for plugging the television in for movie watching or game playing.

There is also another VGA port and a composite video out for the on-board video, but these are disabled and can be ignored. They may cause confusion for novices when setting the system up. The worst feature of the whole system is the 17in Packard Bell monitor, which doesn't do justice to the rest of the system.

Pentium 4 processors are especially well regarded for video editing, a pastime that requires plenty of hard disk space and a FireWire port, both of which are present here. There are actually two ports on the 9071; one at the back and, usefully, one on the front which is good for plugging in a camcorder without fumbling blindly around the back of the computer.

There are five USB ports in total of which two are front-mounted for convenience. All the usual ports and sockets are on hand as are three vacant PCI slots.

The on-board sound is acceptable although a sound card upgrade would improve the system. The supplied speakers are small and neat, which wins plenty of marks in the style stakes but isn't so good for serious audiophiles. The two pod speakers mount on the side of the monitor and a volume is mounted on the small subwoofer.

Windows XP Home is the operating system but the rest of the software package can be tweaked to suit. Full details of what is available can be seen at PC World but the choices are good, including photo-editing software, video editing, games and office software.

Overall, the iXtreme is a very nice system and only the ropey monitor and a lack of available memory slots count against it.

DETAILS
Price: £1,699

Contact: Packard Bell 01628 512400
www.packardbell.co.uk