Acer Aspire G600p

These days everyone wants more from their home PC - more power, more features, more versatility.

We want to be able to play games, watch DVDs, listen to CDs and watch TV on our computers as well as surfing the internet, drafting reports or helping the kids with their school assignments.

In response, manufacturers such as Acer are increasingly offering multimedia systems that aim to be all things to all people, and the Acer Aspire G600p is a case in point.

The G600p is a strange-looking creature with a curious hump at the top of the system mini-tower, which turns out to be a CD storage case with a slide-back cover where you can stash up to eight of your most-viewed or listened-to CDs and DVDs.

Just in front of the storage case are six CD function buttons including play/pause, stop/eject, back, forward, down and up. This means you can control the CD-RW drive while your PC is switched off, turning the PC into a basic music centre.

If this drive set-up doesn't suit your needs, you can swap these drives for a CD-Rom or DVD-RW drive, although this will inevitably alter the overall price of the system.

Underneath the controls on the front of the system tower is a Liteon CD-RW and below that is a large flap hinged on the left-hand side of the system tower, which opens to reveal a floppy disk drive, 16-speed DVD-Rom drive, volume dial and headphone socket.

Just below this is another, smaller flap, which flips up to reveal two USB2 ports, a FireWire port, and speaker sockets.

There are also Secure Digital (SD), Multimedia Card (MMC) and Memory Stick card slots under this flap, which means you can upload files from a digital camera or PDA with ease.

Underneath this is a massive, rather ugly frosted plastic power button which illuminates when the system is on.

The tower is clad in Acer's signature metallic blue and beige, which matches the casing of the own-brand 15in active matrix TFT LCD AL511 monitor.

This flat panel has a native resolution of 1,024 x 768 and there are five simple function buttons on the front of the fascia, just under the display area.

Image quality is more than good enough for watching DVDs; colours, including skintones, are realistic and outlines crisply rendered.

Connectivity round the back of the system is also good with a local area network socket, two further USB2 and one Firewire port, a VGA and a DVI socket.

There are also two PS/2 slots a parallel, Midi and serial ports, the usual array of mini jacks and a TV out socket coming straight off the All-In-Wonder Radeon 7500 graphics card with its integrated TV tuner.

The TV tuner card also has a programmable recording function.

Open up the G600p and you will find a 2.4GHz Pentium 4 processor powering the system coupled with 256MB of DDR SD-Ram system memory and an 80GB Samsung hard disk.

All these components are housed on an MSI 6533E motherboard with a Sis651 chipset. This board has three PCI slots, of which two are free, the third being taken up with a modem card.

Only one of the four 3.5in drive bays is vacant and both of the 5.25in bays are occupied. Two of the smaller bays have been mounted side-on giving easy access to the drives they house, making installation a bit easier.

This system did well in Sysmark 2002, with an overall score of 211.

Its scores of 4,716 in 3Dmark 2001 and 72.9 frames per second in Jedi Knight were fair for a system with a Radeon 7500 card, but slightly disappointing for a PC that professes to be an all-encompassing digital entertainment system.

If you are looking for an all-in-one digital entertainment system, the feature-packed Aspire is worth consideration. 3D performance, however, is lacklustre and in need of upgrading.

SPECS

• 2.4GHz Pentium 4
• 256MB DDR SD-Ram
• 80GB Samsung hard disk
• 40x 12x 48x Liteon LTR CD-RW
• 16x BTC BDV316B DVD-Rom
• All-In-Wonder Radeon 7500
• 15in TFT LCD Acer AL511 monitor
• Windows XP Home
• 2yr carry-in warranty

DETAILS
Price: £1,050 (£894 ex VAT)
Contact: Acer 0870 900 2237
www.acer.co.uk