Avanti's machine configuration is based around a tried and tested formula which should have enabled it to complete out tests with flying colours. This was almost the case, just being let down on a few areas.

First Impressions

After putting the building on a state of alert for receiving unlabelled, plain boxes after our experience with the Protek machine, the National Guard were put on standby when yet another turned up. Again, the only thing giving away its contents was the fact it was accompanied by a Smile Monitor box. I must say that I would be disappointed to pay out £800 plus VAT on a computer an not to be enthusiastic about opening up and pretty box with at least the manufacturers details and an air of quality about it. We all laugh at people who go into PC World and buy the first "of-the-shelf" machine they see, but at least it comes in a pretty box and has that air of quality about it. It's besides the point that they pay through their nose for the privilege, but you understand what I'm getting at. Once again, no points so far for first impressions.

Our tradition for have no points continues on when the box is actually opened. Not only are once again none of the ports labelled, all the drivers and manuals were wrapped up in the motherboard anti-static bag. Whilst this might be good if you want to dismantle the machine and store parts of it safely, it isn't going to encourage you to keep all the bits and bobs safely together or give a good impression and I'm sure Avanti wouldn't be too keen on you doing the former anyway.

The machine itself had a bit of a rough ride to us - when we removed it from the box there was a definite rattle going on inside. To be on the safe side we had a quick look inside before powering the machine up, only to find that the front fan and speaker had come away from the case. The speaker itself had broken away completely but we were able to re-attach the fan easily enough. The machine was packed well enough inside its box so I think we must have just been unlucky.

Features

Interestingly enough the M400 is almost exactly the same configuration as the Protek Ultra MX, with the main difference being an Intel Pentium III 550 instead of the Athlon 550. There are other differences such as a slightly larger Samsung 20Gb HDD and obviously the motherboard, which is this time based around a Chaintech with the Via Apollo Pro chipset. The other main difference is that Avanti have overcome a big shortcoming in the Protek system by supplying a Creative 4 Point Surround speaker system instead of the lacklustre effort from Protek. These are great speakers and sound very nice, especially when running newer games which support the four speaker setup so you get full benefit. Coupled with these speakers is the same great Creative Labs Soundblaster Live 1024 player as present in the Protek machine. The soundcard and speakers make a great combination and gives the machine a real lift on the games playing front.

Strangely enough, although the Apollo Pro chipset support UDMA/66 and so does the Samsung 20Gb hard drive used, Avanti have to not use a UDMA/66 cable! Only using a standard IDE cable so the drive is only running at UDMA/33 has lost any benefit that the system should have gained by using UDMA/66. To make matters worse, the system complains about the fact that there's no 80pin UDMA/66 cable on bootup! I think we'll have to put this down to an oversight on Avanti's part.

Ergonomics

Although the case is a standard Midi-ATX, this time with the Power supply not obstructing access to the CPU, the first thing that you notice when removing the cover is the fact that the cabling is a piece of modern art. By that I don't mean that everything is clinical and exact, I actually mean the complete opposite. In fact so far in the opposite direction its unbelievable. The cables look like they were connected up and just shoved in the case. There was no attempt to keep things neat and out of the way. Normally tidy cables are only pretty and might actually just help when you have to access the memory slots if you want to upgrade, in this case the additional fan a the front of the case to help airflow has its efficiency slashed by having the airflow disrupted by the gaggle of cables. Full marks to Avanti for the extra fan but minus those marks and some more for making it useless with the cabling.

The mouse is a Microsoft standard PS/2 and the keyboard, whilst not in the Keytronics/Cherry type league, is very usable. The monitor is a Smile 17" with a viewable area of 15.817" and a maximum resolution of 1600x1200 @ 60Hz, and probably the best out of all the entries.

Performance

After receiving such good scores from the Protek machine, it was interesting to see how the Avanti compared, being almost exactly the same configuration but based around the Intel processor. Having said that, if we were to go on these results alone, Intel might as well pack up and go home; The Avanti is about 20% slower that the Protek machine. It is very difficult to justify this result just looking at the specs but if you were to ask my opinion, I'd say that the lack of a UDMA/66 cable might account for a couple of percent, although that's being generous, but I did feel that the machine had a problem. We had an issue with the hard drive when we first received the machine, probably due to the rough ride it had, but the memory did not seem to be operating correctly. I would expect this sort of score from a machine in this configuration but with 64Mg so there are some real question marks. Obviously we can only go by the machine Avanti actually give us, but I would have thought given another chance they should have been able to give us another identical machine that was up with the Protek performance wise.

Final Analysis

The Avanti machine was plagued with problems from day one although this was a result of the machine having a bad trip over to us rather than a direct reflection on Avanti. When we contacted them to say we thought we had a hard drive problem they sorted us out almost straight away so it's good to know there is backup there if needed. The machine was never quite right although it did complete our tests with a bit of prompting and the sound card and speaker system are real plus points.

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