In computing, just like everything else, the good ideas don't always catch on. It would be a shame if that were to happen here, because the Guardian data protection system which gives Multivision's new PC its name deserves to carve out a niche for itself.

Multivision believes that the device will have a broad appeal, and to prove its point, it has fitted it to a machine both priced and configured to suit the home buyer wanting an affordable but capable all-rounder.

Before saying more about the rest of the PC though, it makes sense to go into more detail about the Guardian hardware itself. Physically, it's a modest-looking device which sits directly beneath the PC's 40GB UltraDMA/100 hard disk, but it can have an effect out of all proportion to its size. It works by creating a hidden, read-only partition on the drive, and storing the operating system and applications in it, effectively walling them off completely from any kind of outside interference.

Every time you boot, this pristine master version is copied into the visible partition, and it is this that you see when you work. Although things can go wrong, accidents can happen, and even malicious attacks will take temporary effect, all you need to do to start literally afresh is reboot, and everything is just how it was before the trouble started.

You have the option - which most of us will probably use - to allow program data files to be saved permanently to disk, but they do not reside on the hidden partition. In order to make a permanent change, like installing a new application, you have to boot from a special floppy which unlocks the hidden partition and allows you to alter its contents, but without this (password protected) disk, the machine is impervious.

In operation, Guardian is invisible in the sense that it doesn't slow the machine down or make it behave oddly in any apparent way. The only difference you see is that the size of the hard disk is a little smaller because of the size of the hidden partition.

Clearly this could be a God-send, whether you are worried about what employees, students or the public might do to machines on your network, or what your own offspring might do to your machine at home. Equally, you needn't fear experimenting and tinkering, since if you get it wrong you just restart and try again from scratch.

Clearly this has potential, but it wouldn't be much good if the rest of the PC was fit only for the skip. Thankfully, this is far from being the case. The system itself is based on a 1.3GHz Athlon, so there's plenty of raw power to play with. The core spec is rounded out by 128MB of PC133 SDRAM, the 40GB hard disk and a 32MB AGP 4X Gainward Hollywood MX graphics card based on Nvidia's GeForce2 MX accelerator.

This card also sports an integrated TV tuner; handy if you fancy watching the news or just Teletext in the corner of the screen somewhere, while its companion FM tuner is there to keep the radio-heads happy.

A Pioneer 16-speed DVD-ROM and 32/12/8-speed Samsung CD-RW drive provide the basis for home cinema and backups to, or copying of, optical media. If DVD films are what takes your fancy, the soundtrack side of things is greatly aided by the quality Videologic Digitheatre LC 5.1 speaker system, which is driven by an equally good Videologic SonicFury (aka Turtle Beach Santa Cruz) sound card. This gives convincing, detailed Dolby Digital surround reproduction, which is something of a bonus when you consider the price of the machine as a whole.

The 17-inch (15.8-inch viewable) LG Flatron 775FT monitor delivers a bright, crisp image via its flat screen CRT tube, although a bit of jump in the picture size was evident from time to time, suggesting less than perfect voltage regulation. The machine is rounded off with an internal V.90 PCI modem, Windows ME, and a copy of Lotus Smartsuite Millennium Edition, which remains worth having for Lotus Organizer alone.

The combination of components works well together and the resulting performance is relatively strong for an Athlon 1.3 with 128MB of RAM, which is pretty much the cherry on the cake.

Some manufacturers might have taken the cynical step of fitting the Guardian system to a machine that needed some help selling, but this isn't what's happened here, and the end result is much enhanced as a result. This is quite a respectable PC in its own right, but the built-in data protection hardware is likely to sell the machine to some buyers all by itself.