This system is in some ways very conventional. It's built into a practical, but slightly uninspiring, midi-tower case, with CD-RW and DVD drives in the front panel and a 120GB Maxtor hard drive for fixed storage inside. The system is built around an Athlon XP 2600+ chip with 512MB of memory, so we'd expect it to have marginally higher performance than the CCL or Microland systems, both of which use the Athlon XP 2500+.

After processor and storage, the third key element of any PC is its graphics subsystem and here the picture is created by a GeForce FX 5700 card from Microstar. This is pretty much in the middle of nVidia's current chip range and gives a good account itself in this installation. A 3DMark 2001SE index of 8,841 is above average for a budget PC and the 3DMark 03 result of 2,859 is the best in this group.

The graphics card drives a 17-inch ViewSonic Ultra Brite conventional CRT monitor, with a slightly rounded face. This display produces a clear, high-contrast picture and is easy to adjust, too. The Ultra Brite facility increases the brightness of the display, but only to a level other manufacturers consider normal.

Sound output comes from a CMedia 5.1 channel sound chip, driving a simple pair of stereo speakers; Altec Lansing 220s. While the speakers are a little larger than most satellites, this doesn't really compensate for the lack of a sub-bass unit and their sound output is better in the mid-range and treble frequencies.

The SYSmark result was a little disappointing at just 165, when the Athlon XP 2500+ systems both scored higher; 198 in the case of the Microland PC. JAL provides a variety of software with its system, though no major applications. Both PowerDVD and WinDVD are included, as well as four games and seven games demo, but there's no word processor.

There's nothing wrong with the JAL ITR 2800VS, but nothing much to differentiate it from the rest of the group, either. It appears to be a robust and reliable PC, with a fair gaming performance, but a touch under-performing on business applications.