Pacific Millennium 500 review

All the Pacific PCs we've seen recently have used the same large tower case, regardless.

It's a solid lump of tin, with a lot of room inside and non-confrontational styling, as well as a locking on-off button. Its drawback is that the curved fascia buries the floppy mouth, so if a disk gets stuck, it can be awkward to extract.

After admiring its looks, it's time to connect all its bits up. This might seem stressful if you've never done it before, but it's easy, really, as most sockets are different. But it's not hard to make it easier, with a bit of labelling or colour-coding.

Pacific's user guide merely gives the sensible advice that most connectors are different, so a little care is all that's needed to get the PC connected. It does deal with the fact that the mouse and keyboard plugs look identical. There's no colour coordination, though.

If good hardware is poorly set up, it may take you many months to work out how to get it running optimally, so we check this out every time we test a PC. One happy upshot of the Millennium Mistake is that suppliers now pay more attention to setup. So, whereas in the past you you might have found your system clock set for any month in any year, and Windows thinking you're using a US keyboard and Australian dollars, settings are now more accurate. And even if your computer does come configured for Caracas, Windows is pretty good about changing its setup.

First start of the Pacific brought Windows up in the basic 640x480 screen resolution. Without fiddling, we restarted and it gave us a more sensible 1024x768 in 16-bit colour. We've seen this on other machines, but it seems to be only a quirk. Once it has settled down, the machine was fine.

At 75Hz, the refresh rate wasn't optimal. The monitor is happy at 85Hz in 1024x768 resolution, but Windows, though it recognised the display, seemed not to know its capabilities. And another odd thing. When later we came to reconfigure Windows, it would show only 16-bit colour at 1024x768 resolution. When we changed the monitor type (which Windows had originally identified correctly) to a similar model, it behaved itself. We suspect there was something wrong with the original .Inf file (which describes the monitor's capabilities to Windows).

Sensible design at the rear of the Pacific's ADI monitor, means you can shove it closer to the wall. That's the trouble with big screens - you need to get further away from them. Sadly the picture isn't so impressive. It's a bit blurry: black text on a white background shows a coloured smear to the left of every character. Misconvergence.

We've always liked Matrox Millennium graphics cards in all their various incarnations. The G400 is the best yet, though Pacific opt for the low-spec version with a 'mere' 16Mb memory, able to drive only one monitor at a time. Opinions differ, but some rate this card's big brother, the 32Mb G400Max with two monitor outputs, as the best on the block. Costs half as much again, of course (about £135 plus VAT).

The keyboard is a limp, clickless jobbie, but flatter and less wasteful of desk space than most. It has a clip-on 'ergonomic' wrist rest at the front to help you escape the dreaded RSI. Its cable's very short, about 1.25m. The PC's a tower, best placed under the desk - the keyboard socket could be 2m away or more.

The accompanying rodent is a two-button Microsoft Mouse 2, not the IntelliMouse. From Pacific, this is a bit odd. They seem well aware of current trends, and, though a roller is not quite essential yet, it's already utterly useful.