My boss decided it was time for us to upgrade our desktops. After shopping numerous PC vendors, he found an incredibly cheap package in the Xi AMD Athlon system. I was perfectly happy with my "old" computer, but I must say, the prospect of a new computer was pretty cool.

When he told me that he found an AMD Athlon 1000 Mhz with 128 MB RAM, DVD, and 32 MB video for a little over $1000, I thought it might be too good to be true. I was a little leary that something might be wrong with it.

Upon opening the box up, I was a little discouraged at Xi's attempt to imitate Apple's iMac series with the cheap plastic covers on the box. A petty thing to balk at, I know, but I saw it as a trendy rip-off of Apple. Anywho, I set the thing up in about 10 minutes, no problems at all, and was ready to check it out.

My first impression of the computer running: Holy cow is this thing FAST! It booted in about 25-30 seconds with all the pre-loaded software, It absolutely screams! I thought to myself "Now this is how a computer should be."

Next, I started my adventures with the aforementioned pre-loaded software...Perhaps the biggest flaw of this machine. I don't how they chose to setup Win98 SE, but it does not ship with a very good, clean software setup. The CABS are at the root level, which was weird, but not too big of a deal. I have no idea what they did to corrupt the registry, but with every software install that I performed which required a reboot, I was greeted by the wonderful Windows Blue Screen of Death with each initial post-install boot (a second boot remedied the BSOD). I must say, that quickly got old, so I decided to format and perform my own install of Win98 SE (my boss stuck with their install and ended up ghosting my install to his machine about a week later, after his crashed and burned).

Since I wiped out their software install and performed my own, this thing has run like a charm. I can honestly say I've had no problems at all with this very solid machine.

Neither one of us have had to deal with tech. support, nor do I anticipate it unless we encounter hardware failure (we're both pretty advanced Win98 computer users...The two of us make up the entire computer services department for our school), but I have heard horror stories from other Xi owners about their tech. support.

If you're an advanced Windows user and find yourself pretty self-sufficient when it comes to fixing technical problems, this is a very solid machine to purchase. The speed can't be beat, the 32 MB of video delivers stunning graphics on and off the web, and there's plenty of storage space for performing just about all tasks except for heavy video/audio editing. Prepare for a hit or miss software install, though, and don't be surprised if you have format and do it over yourself.



Recommended: Yes

Amount Paid (US$): ~1200
Operating System: Windows
Processor: Other
Processor speed: over 1000
RAM: 128
Internal Storage: DVD
Hard Drive (GB): 21-30