PC Nextday Zoostorm 3.2GHz Media PC review

In the era of the old-style cathode ray tube monitors, a 19in screen would take up more of your desk than the corresponding computer that was hooked up to it.

PC Nextday has cleverly chosen a compact Asus Cube case to accompany its 19in flat panel. Not only is it a miniature model, but it has a built-in quickstart multimedia mode so that you can play DVDs and CDs without waiting to boot into Windows. Or at least, that's the theory - in practice we couldn't play any of our test discs. When we selected any of the media modes in the front panel controls, the system showed a BIOS boot screen and then nothing but blackness.

There's also Home Theater software that needs Windows to run. It's like a cheap and cheerful version of Microsoft's Media Center. Although it offers similar functions - photo browsing, DVD playback, TV recording - they're implemented in a far clunkier way than those in Media Center. For example, TV recording requires you to schedule recording times manually, whereas in more advanced products, you simply have to pick a programme and the start and end times are worked out for you automatically. DVD playback shows the film in about a third of the screen area by default. It was only by chance that we discovered we needed to double-click the playback window for full-screen playback.

You'd be better off avoiding Home Theater, as similar functions are either available through normal applications -such as Cyberlink PowerDVD - or for download freely or cheaply. The photo browsing feature looks crude compared to the free program Picasa, and the cheap standalone program ShowShifter offers far superior TV recording functions.

But when you do get DVD and TV playback going, at least the supplied AOC LM925 monitor is a reasonable option. It's not quite as sharp as the Tiny's display, but it provides watchable video playback, and it's an acceptable quality monitor for desktop use.

The compact nature of the system is echoed by the speakers, which are a stereo set with a subwoofer for bass. For a games system, surround sound speakers are a must if you have the space. But unless your computer is your only entertainment system, you'd be better off saving surround sound for your living room.

There's nothing compact about the PC Nextday's hard disk, which offers a whopping 200GB of storage. PC Nextday has also managed to squeeze a very handy HP PSC1215 printer/scanner/copier into the box alongside the computer. Including a multifunction device is a masterstroke, and wins the system a full six stars for features.

The PC Nextday's Microsoft Wireless Comfort Keyboard has a rounded shape, which is like a less dramatic version of Microsoft's discontinued ergonomic keyboards, which had a distinctive split shape. The keyboard may be slightly more comfortable to use, but the curved keyboard puts the Enter key where Backspace would normally be - not an ideal setup for touch-typists.

The case has a generous range of ports for connecting external devices, including S/P-DIF optical for connecting audio equipment, 4 USB 2.0 and both FireWire and mini-FireWire ports. The downside of compact cases is that your internal expansion options are limited. This system has no free PCI slots - although you're no worse off than with the much bigger Tiny. There's a shared bay for an external or internal drive, which is taken up by the memory card reader. You can upgrade the memory or add a dedicated graphics card in the free AGP slot. The system relies on Intel 82865G integrated graphics, which have been assigned a weedy 8MB of memory. This means that they can hardly handle animated menu transitions - let alone advanced 3D games. Not surprisingly, the system failed to run our Doom 3 benchmark of games performance.