Product: Dell Dimension 4600C Price: From $8,000 Pros: A sturdy, compact system with plenty fo ports Cons: Needs a few upgrades before it will really scare your granny
There are two kinds of personal computer buyer: those who build their own machine and those who buy a Dell. Or that is the way it seems sometimes. Dell computers, though as conservatively designed as it is possible to be, seem to be held in great respect by the unwashed masses.
And it is true, they are not bad machines as far as computers go. The new Dimension 4600C, as seen advertised in MTR stations around town, is a case in point. There is nothing too adventurous about it, but one would be hard pushed to find fault.
Starting with the basics, the unit we received from Dell comes with a 2.8-gigahertz Intel Pentium 4 with 512 megabytes of Ram and a 120-gigabyte Seagate Barracuda hard drive. For graphics, it comes with an NVidia GeForce 4 440 with 64MB of video memory.
The optical drive is, oddly, a DVD/CD-R/CD-RW combo that was originally designed for laptop computers. But they had space to save, so its inclusion makes sense. A DVD-R/RW upgrade is available.
Beside the DVD is a bay for an optional pair of PC Card slots - good for wireless networking, storage or flash card readers.