Specifications:

Pentium III 800 MHz
128 Megs of 133 MHz SDRAM
20 Gig 7200 RPM Hard Drive
GeForce 256 w/ 32 Megs Video Ram
17" E770 Monitor
12x DVD-Rom Drive
Altec Lansing ACS-340 Speakers w/ Subwoofer
SoundBlaster 64V PCI Sound Card
Conexant V.90/56K Modem
Windows 95 SE

The Dell Dimension 4100 has been a pleasant experience from the get go, providing a great deal of computer power for the money spent on it. The various options offered by Dell and the affordable prices make this computer series a strong one for any custormer looking for a good machine with specs that will last them for a decent amount of time.

On the machine I've had (since the launch of the 4100 series this past summer) performance has been wonderful. To give you a context for my experience, I was upgrading after using a Pentium 150 with 32 Megs for the past 4 1/2 years, but I'd been using better computers at work, school, and various other places and thought I knew what to expect. The performance was better that I expected. Most of the demanding software I through at the computer worked quite quickly. Archiving my entire CD collection didn't take very long because of the speed of the machine in terms of encoding the files. Games have run quite smoothly and have thankfully made me unwilling to want to spend a vast amount of money on a Playstation 2 any time soon.

The hard drive is speedy, not yielding slowdowns for access usually, and the DVD-Rom drive performs admirably. On my setup video decompression is done via software, so the results are good-not-great looking, but certainly passable if you're watching an occasional movie on your computer for whatever reason. Sound is passable if unexceptional, but that was something you can definitely augment in your order. The speakers provided aren't very big, but the subwoofer helps make sure that the system can at least play your music with a decent punch.

The software bundle that comes with the computer is fairly minimal, but servicable. You can either get Works or Office, and I chose MS Works to save a few bucks and it has worked well since the only productivity app I use regularly is Microsoft Word (for some reason I like doing my HTML in NotePad:-) It should be noted that the Works bundle comes with a substantial amount of home productivity bonuses like Encarta and such, but there are better programs available for most of these tasks. Also provided is MusicMatch Jukebox, a wonderful music management and MP3 encoding program. The one downside to the bundle (that I received) is the fact that Dell doesn't provide you with an OS install disk, but simply a backup/recovery disk. I understand this is done to prevent piracy, but with an Operating System like Win 98, occasional reinstalls of the OS are needed as system files tend to get messed up with constant use. To not provide an install disk seems like a cheap ploy on the part of Microsoft and Dell to force us to buy the Windows ME upgrade.

As for problems with the computer, there have been very few. One specific program has given me many problems: 3D0's Sammy Sosa High Heat Baseball 2001 has failed to run for the past 3 months, regardless of everything I've tried. The program ran fine for about 2 months, but I've been unable to play the best Baseball game on the market since then. The only other problem I've experienced is the very infrequent lockup at shutdown. It's been so infrequent (about once every 6 weeks of everyday use) that I hadn't even updated the BIOS until recently to help fix the problem.

So aside from some minor quibbles and one computer game that doesn't want to work, I have to give this computer high recommendations. It's a good deal (especially with current prices) for a system that will last.



Recommended: Yes

Amount Paid (US$): 1600
Operating System: Windows
Processor: Intel Pentium III
Processor speed: 701-800
RAM: 128
Internal Storage: DVD
Hard Drive (GB): 13-20