The Dimension 4100 - a solid machine at a moderate price
Written: Mar 02 '01
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Pros: a solid quality machine, with a high degree of flexibility and good software package.
Cons: Some hardware configurations may cause problems with multimedia usage.
The Bottom Line: Very good machine when you take the time to design it yourself. Mediocre at best if you don't. Take the time!
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| Godai-kun's Full Review: Dell Dimension 4100 Series |
I have always built my own machines, dating back to the days of my first 286, and have generally saved a lot of money that way, if not time. That's because when something doesn't work, YOU have to do the digging around on the web for information, and spend hours on line with the technical support for each component, not to mention obtaining and burn-testing all of the components you use. After all these years, I decided the time had come to let someone ELSE worry about all of this, and started looking at buying a commercially-assembled machine with a good long warranty.
I looked at various options, and wound up at Dell. Not because they had the lowest price - that prize went to Gateway. But my past experience with Dell machines and the options available on the 4100 made for an unbeatable combination.
I have had the opportunity now to work with two Dimension 4100s with radically different configurations, and can say that for this machine, as with most any computer, a little forethought and a bit of extra money spent make a great deal of difference in the quality of the experience you can expect to get out of it.
At work I have a 4100 based on an 800MHz Pentium III with 128 MB of memory, the standard 20 GB hard drive, DVD drive, and integrated audio and video. It works just fine for non-multimedia tasks, but the integrated audio and video tend to cause problems. When playing MP3 files through WinAmp, for example, I hear pauses and clicks every time that video memory is hit - and this is a direct result of the on-board video card sharing main memory instead of having dedicated memory. DVD playback is fine as long as NOTHING is happening in background. If it does, you get pauses, playback errors, and other problems.
Taking all of this into account, when the time came to design my home machine, I bypassed some of the cheaper, but less efficient options. I got a video card with plenty (32MB) of dedicated memory, in addition to upping the main memory pool to 256 MB. I got the SoundBlaster Live! soundcard which was either not available or not selected when my office machine was built. And I got a slightly faster (1 GHz Pentium III) processor. The result was a machine I have rarely had any problems with, and which performs in every application I have tested it on like a dream.
The 12x DVD-ROM on this machine performs exactly as it should - I have never seen any artifacts or errors when playing video DVDs, and data DVDs are read cleanly and quickly. My only complaint about it is that its actual ability to rip audio from an audio CD is only about 7x, which means that my 8x CDR drive cannot operate at its fuil speed of 8x unless an intermediate hard drive write is performed. Dell should have tested this before offering the pair of drives as a combination, or at least indicated that there would be an issue so that I could have selected a faster reading drive. But this is a minor issue, which I can easily fix through an upgrade if it becomes a real issue.
Similarly, the CDRW drive burns any kind of media without protest: CDRs, CDRWs, dark blue, light blue, green, yellow...I have yet to find a type of media that this drive won't handle. This kind of flexibility is rare, as most drives do have their preferences. The included copy of Adaptec Easy Cd Creator is easy to use, and does an excellent job at getting the data on the disc. It was a bit annoying, however, that Adaptec wants me to spent $90 on an upgrade to this package in order to handle such "advanced media formats" as MP3 files...
I went with the ATI 32MB Radeon card, since I have been quite pleased with ATIs past efforts, particularly the All-in-Wonder line. I was actually disappointed that Dell didn't offer the All-In-Wonder Radeon among its list of options, as I would have snapped it up in a minute. Maybe this will become available in the future. In the meanwhile, the exitsing Radeon meets or exceeds all of my expectations. It handles 2D or 3D acceleration very well,
As for the machine's general performance, it is head and shoulders above the performance of the one at work, not to mention my previous machine, built around an AMD K6-200. It's fast and seems to make good use of the improvements in Windows ME, although I do miss the Command Line, and being able to run some of my Windows 95 applications.
Someone shopping for a solid machine should consider the Dell Dimension 4100 series, but should definitely design it himself and not take one off the rack. With a few upgrades and a couple hundred more bucks spent, a merely mediocre desktop turns into a truly excellent one.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 2200
Operating System: Windows
Processor: Intel Pentium III
Processor speed: over 1000
RAM: 256
Internal Storage: CD-RW and DVD
Hard Drive (GB): 31-40
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Epinions.com ID:
Godai-kun
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Member: Kevin Barth
Location: Silver Spring, Maryland
Reviews written: 248
Trusted by: 55 members
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