Mesh Elite E6600 Express review

With the launch of Windows Vista just around the corner, you may be tempted to put off buying a new PC until it comes preinstalled on new computers.

But with Mesh's Elite E6600 Express you'll receive a copy of Vista once it's available, for a shipping and handling fee of £15. See www.meshcomputers.com for more details.

The Elite is housed in Mesh's familiar sturdy black and silver case, but inside there's one of Intel's latest Core 2 Duo processors, the E6600, with a generous 2GB of RAM. We were impressed with its performance, especially its scores of 271 in video editing and 195 in image editing. Although it's not as fast as more expensive Core 2 Extreme systems, the Elite is more than powerful enough for demanding tasks such as video editing. While it's not as noisy as some PCs we've heard, the humming and whirring of the fans is noticeable in a quiet room, and a little distracting.

Gamers will be pleased by the Elite's 256MB GeForce 7950GT graphics card. It managed an impressive 85.3fps in Doom 3 and 41fps in Call of Duty 2. This is the first Core 2 Duo PC we've seen with an SLI motherboard. It uses the older Nvidia Nforce 4 chipset rather than the newer Nforce 570 or 590, but it's still reliable and quick and lets you add a second graphics card at a later date. The 19" Sony monitor isn't widescreen, but the glossy sheen makes colours look rich and bright. However, the white was a little greyish and there was noticeable banding in our colour and greyscale transitions tests, so it's not ideal for delicate photo editing.

Movie buffs and gamers will appreciate the Creative 7.1 surround-sound speakers. They're not especially loud but sound well balanced and produce clean sound without distortion. The cordless Logitech mouse is comfortable, but the keyboard feels spongy, making extended periods of typing tiresome. The Elite has only one free 51/4" drive bay, but with a DVD writer and separate DVD-ROM drive already installed, it should be enough, and there are two free 21/2" bays for adding extra hard disks. There are two empty PCI slots, but one is blocked off by the riser for the two FireWire ports. There's no memory card reader, but there is a floppy drive; ideally, we'd have preferred it the other way round.

Mesh's Elite E6600 Express is powerful in games and Windows. It's generously specified, a competent all-rounder and a good choice for a family PC.