Creative Blaster fax / modem

Advantages Loads of software, good specifacation for the money, excellent after sales support
Disadvantages out of date virtually as soon as you buy it

...I bought a Packard Bell Iextreme in December of last year. The machine when I bought it was very well spec’d for the money (£1199). The spec is as follows: CPU Pentium III 1GHz Motherboard Saturn Memory 128 MB PC133 SDRAM Hard Drive 40 GB UDMA CD Drive Pioneer DVD-115 and 8x4x32 CDRW Floppy Drive 1.44MB 3.5" Drive – Monitor A725 Speakers Supplied with Monitor Video Card nVidia Geforce2 MX 32MB with TV out Sound Card Creative SoundBlaster Live Modem MR2800 56K V90 Data Fax TV Card Hauppauge WinTV PCI + MGI Pure Diva Software Firewire Askey SD10-D82 IEEE1394 Case Daytona Keyboard iBoard (USB) Mouse iMouse (USB) The machine on the whole has been very reliable. It was supplied with a Psion wavefinder and a HP 843c Printer. The Wavefinder was so easy to install it was unreal... Read review

Advantages Good componants and build quality
Disadvantages only 2 usb ports

...available at same cost ) . Most importantly , I could upgrade with little extra cost , such coponants as sound card . No printer or scanner were included , but a 3 year on-site guarantee is included in the price. The system I chose : Matrix XP 1800+TI , comprising : Mesh ATX midi tower case + 300w PSU Athlon XP 1800+ CPU motherboard (+ sound ) 256 Mb PC2100 DDR Memory ( 266mhz) 60 gb 7200rpm , UDMA-133 EIDE Hard Disk drive with 2 meg buffer 1.44 mb 3.5" floppy Teac 24*10*10 burnproof CD-RW drive LG 16* DVD rom 64 mb NVIDIA Gforce2 TI + TV out 19" Hansol 920P Digital Monitor 0.26mm DPI 95 khz Microsoft I/net Keyboard IntelliMouse and a mousemat Windows XP + recovery CD Sound Blaster 5.1 audio dolby surround Internal 56k V90 voice / fax / modem Creative 4.1 surround sound speakers. Back up disks of all hardware installed... Read review