The move away from huge tower systems is something we are very enthusiastic about and the Alienware Bot is a welcome part of this trend. Despite its small case, however, there is certainly no lack of power inside.

At the heart of this PC beats a powerful Intel Pentium 4 3GHz processor and there is 512Mb of memory made up from two cards arranged for best performance. The on-board Intel Extreme graphics do not offer as good performance as add-on cards and they take memory away from Windows but Intel Extreme can change the amount of memory it uses depending on what task it is performing.

Gaming performance was not spectacular but there is a spare PCI Express slot so you can upgrade the graphics later on if you want. The display is a compact and affordable NEC 15in TFT.

The hard disk is a reasonable 80Gb, which is good enough for most people but video editing will quickly fill this up. There are three spare Serial ATA connections inside the case but no actual space to fit another disk so an external disk is the only option.

The optical drive is a 16-speed DVD writer capable of burning disks in both plus (+) and minus (-) formats. However, it is hidden behind a door which had a very tight latch on our machine, so it did not open when the disc was ejected. Alienware assured us that this was a one-off fault.

There is also a floppy drive behind a door, although a memory card reader would have been more welcome, while at the bottom are a FireWire and two USB 2 sockets as well as microphone and headphone connections.

The back has a further four USB 2, one FireWire and six audio connections for full surround sound. The speakers supplied are Creative MegaWorks THX 2.1 250D, giving stereo sound with a sub-woofer.

The keyboard is a Logitech Internet Pro with dedicated keys for controlling media players and quickly launching programs. The mouse is a Microsoft Intellimouse Explorer. It isn't wireless but is comfortable to use.

The software supplied is limited to Nero Express for creating CDs and DVDs and CyberLink PowerDVD for playing movies.

This is a good value PC with good performance and peripherals. Alienware offers a free phone technical support service for the hardware for a year (though not for software-related problems) but we thought the delivery cost of £100 was a bit steep.

Contact:
Alienware 0800 279 9751
www.alienware.co.uk