Powered by a 2GHz 'Northwood' Pentium 4 backed by a huge 512MB of PC800 RDRAM memory, the Neo PC-4 all-in-one is a true desktop PC. It's fast, full of connectivity options and with a large hard drive; everything, in fact, that its predecessors weren't.

One of the problems usually associated with this type of PC is accessibility, but not so with the Neo PC-4. Just undo the five screws in the back of the screen to remove the rear cover and you have access to the two DIMM slots. The 7,200rpm 60GB IBM hard drive is also easy to get at, sitting under a cover in one side of the base of the unit.

The rest of the hardware is made up of two modular optical drives, an 8-speed DVD-ROM and a 4/4/24-speed CD-RW, neatly installed in bays in the top of the base unit. A floppy drive and two Type II PC Card slots are housed in the side of the screen, while onboard 10/100 Ethernet and 56K V.90 modem come as standard. Also included are parallel, S/P-DIF, TV out and video in ports, plus three audio ports, a 1394 FireWire port, four USB ports - two in the rear of the system, two built into the side of the screen - and an IR port.

The 17.1-inch TFT screen is powered by a 64MB ATI Mobility Radeon integrated chip that gives the screen a useful native resolution of 1,280 pixels by 1,024 pixels and is powerful enough for all but the post power-hungry games. The screen itself can be tilted and there is a swivel unit built into the base of the system. All in all, it's a nice package.