ADVENT MC3040 review

Since the launch of Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005, there has been a profusion of cases designed to smooth the PC's move from the office to the living area.

Many manufacturers have built PCs that look like DVD players or hi-fi components. Typically these have been prohibitively expensive, with most decent systems costing over £1,000.

Advent's MC3040 takes the same design cues, but at £899 including monitor and speakers it's much more affordable. The case's mirrored finish and sharp styling will look either sophisticated or tacky, depending on your taste, but it's sturdy. One side hides the DVD writer and the other a good range of ports, while the power and eject buttons are placed discreetly on the central stripe.

Sadly, the feeling of quality doesn't extend to the wireless keyboard and mouse, which are both unresponsive and ugly. The keyboard is festooned with short cut keys and the space bar incorporates a fairly useless clickable scroll wheel.

Media Center allows you to watch DVDs, watch and record TV, listen to music and view your photos though a slick interface. The MC3040 has only an analogue TV tuner, though, so you can't receive digital channels. You can control all this from your armchair using the supplied remote.

The silver and blue colour scheme doesn't stretch to the monitor. Instead, Advent has opted for Philips' 170X5 17" LCD. It has a native resolution of 1,280x1,024 and its shiny two-tone styling will look good in most living rooms. Its stand doesn't allow for much adjustment, but viewing angles are wide so you'll have no problem in that respect. The monitor has built-in speakers, although you'll probably prefer to use the separate Philips Acoustic Fusion 610 surround-sound speaker system.

This isn't the slowest system we've tested, but its Intel Pentium 4 515 processor running at 2.93GHz with 512MB of RAM means it has less kick than we would like at this price. It's also unsuitable for running the latest games thanks to the slow GeForce 5200 graphics card. The 160GB hard disk is reasonable for everyday computing, but you could fill this quickly if you made full use of the media features, so you may require a second drive.

If you're on a limited budget but still want a designer PC, the MC3040's Media Center software, decent monitor and speakers make it a viable option. Bear in mind, though, that faster systems are available without the looks for less money.