Thanks to crisis, it's time to trust PCs priced under US$1,000

By Zatni Arbi

JAKARTA (JP) In addition to the awful Asian monetary and economic storm, last year saw a lot of technological progress.

Among them was Intel's introduction of high-performance Pentium II processors, which basically combined the strengths of its Pentium Pro lines and MMX Technology. The processors' clock top speed has been moving upward, with the latest from Intel today being 333 MHz.

However, one thing that had a fairly strong impact on the industry was the emergence of a new breed of PCs selling for under US$1,000.

While in the past such low prices were associated with low- quality, unreliable PCs, the image changed completely when Compaq introduced its own version in this price range.

With Compaq's name on box, buyers trusted the machine, and the sub-$1,000 era started.

No longer would $1,000 or less be considered home-made PCs, assembled using the cheapest components on the market.

While a PC based on the blazing 300 MHz Pentium II processor is certainly a joy to use, people have also realized that at 166 MHz they still can accomplish most of the tasks they need.

At this speed, they can easily do word processing and surf the Web with no hiccups.

The spread of this knowledge contributed to the popularity of PCs of this class.

Believe it or not, these PCs still come with decent multimedia features, including 16-bit sound cards and fast CD-ROM drives.

Not surprisingly, other PC vendors also quickly joined Compaq in making inexpensive but decently equipped PCs for this market segment.

We started to see such PCs from IBM, Hewlett-Packard and Digital (which, by the way, has just been acquired by Compaq).

Some target their low-cost PCs to the home PC market, and others target them to small businesses.

HP, which was among the first vendors to address the need of small and medium enterprises with their Vectra 500 Series PCs, came up with a new line they called Brio.

You might still remember I had the chance to review a Vectra 500 PC which was based on a Pentium 200 MHz processor. That was a great, well-built machine.

At the end of last October, when I reported on HP's Business Solution Center, at the Jakarta Stock Exchange building, I also mentioned the arrival of the Brios.

Courtesy of Hewlett-Packard, I was able to play around with a unit for quite a long time.

The Brio that I tested came with a 166 MHz Pentium with MMX processor, the slowest among all HP PCs.

It had 16 MB of EDO RAM, a 2.5 MB Quantum hard disk, on-board S3 graphics accelerator with 1 MB RAM, a Goldstar 24X CD-ROM drive, a SoundBlaster compatible sound card, a Universal Serial Bus (USB) port, a two-button PS/2 mouse, a 33.6 Kbps modem and a keyboard that had all those extra buttons for launching Internet Explorer and adjusting sound volume.

Mail order shops in the U.S. sell a system like this one for $1,369 (without the display monitor). The basic HP Brio Business PC carries the $999 price tag.

Sleek design

The front panel looks pretty, but the casing is not as heavy- duty as the one I found in Vectra 500. More expensive Brios use casings without screws, but mine does.

To open it up, I have to loosen four screws. Like in Vectra 500, these screws require a special type of screwdriver, not your ordinary one.

The motherboard is attached to a chassis that pops out along with all the expansion cards.

If you recall my report on SCENIC Multimedia eXtension Board, which I had tested using this machine, you'd remember that this PC had a riser card on which all the expansion boards are placed.

While replacing the motherboard would be easy, adding or removing expansion cards will be a tedious job as each time you will have to pull out no fewer than seven connectors, including the power cables, hard disk and floppy diskette data cables.

The cable that connect the motherboard to the fan on the front of the casing became especially difficult to handle once I had the full-length SNI MXB installed, as this card barricaded my access to the motherboard area.

The motherboard is an ATX one, which means that all the external ports -- including the USB port -- are already on-board.

Even the graphics subsystem is already built-in. This Brio comes with HP VL5 S3 Trio 64V2 graphics processor. The on-board video memory is 1 MB, which is definitely not adequate for today's standard.

There are two empty slots in which you can add a total of 1 MB video RAM, making the maximum 2 MB. That's the minimum amount of video RAM you should have on you new PC today.

The power button is located on the front panel, its vulnerable to accidental pressing. Like almost all other new systems I've seen, there is no "reset" button. Therefore, if your system is so badly messed up, you simply have to power down the system and turn it on again.

Needless to say, the new version of Windows 95 will force you to wait before you can start working again as it runs ScanDisk.

The keyboard, which also has four programmable buttons, is too soft for somebody like me who always works with an IBM classic keyboard.

Novice

On the plus side, the Altec Lansing ACS90 speakers produce surprisingly good sound.

The unit also came with an original Windows 95, the service release 2 on CD-ROM, so I didn't have to create my own set of 29 Windows 95 Installation diskettes. HP utilities are great, and they come on a CD-ROM.

In fact, as you probably can see in the accompanying picture, HP Welcome Center is one of the major strengths of this Brio.

It provides true novice users with audio explanations on how to check the PC, how -- and why you should -- backup your files, what the Internet is and how you can connect to it, and many other things.

I think one part a Brio user should not miss is how to setup the computer ergonomically so that you can work comfortably. HP Welcome Center makes it obvious that HP has intended this PC for people who haven't used PCs very much but are willing to learn.

Unfortunately, no application is bundled. HP could have added MS Works so that the excited owner can actually start being productive 15 minutes after he opens the box.

Better still, HP could have worked together with Corel and bundled WordPerfect Office 8 suite with this solid system.