The Elite 933B from Mesh is a well-specified system, but it appears to be aimed more at the business market than the corporate market. There's no manageability software, for example, and there are no security features beyond the normal ones; you get a case lock, the BIOS provides two levels of password protection, and both the floppy drive and the hard drive can be read/write protected.

What you do get is a 933MHz Pentium III backed by 128MB of memory, packed into a fairly large, tool-free mini-tower case with tool-free expansion plates and 5.25-inch drive bays. Opening the case reveals a tidy and clearly laid out interior, with all cabling neatly tied up and access to all the major components clear and unobstructed. There are only single 3.5-inch and 5.25-inch drive bays free, while two out of the five PCI slots remain free.

Mesh provides the Elite 933B with a 20GB Quantum Fireball ATA/100 hard disk for data storage, a 16-speed Pioneer DVD-ROM drive for optical storage, plus an Intel EtherExpress Pro/100 PCI network adapter and a 56kbps internal fax modem.

The rest of the hardware package is oriented more toward the business sector. There's a TEAC 4-speed write, 4-speed rewrite and 32-speed read CD-RW drive and a 32MB Asus V7100 graphics card, the latter built around the Nvidia GeForce2 MX chip. This is fine for games, but a tad over the top for a corporate system. Despite the on-board sound chip, there is also a Creative 128 sound card fitted to the system.

Mesh supplies a three year warranty with the system, the first year of which is on-site, with years two and three being return to base.

Although seemingly over-specified for the corporate sector, the Elite 933B performs well and is also quite cheap in comparison with many other systems in this group test.

Company: Mesh

Contact: 020 8208 4720

Company: IBM

Contact: 0800 169 1458

Company: Dell

Contact: 0870 152 4644

Company: Tiny Computers

Contact: 0800 7317283

Company: Simply

Contact: 08707 297367

Company: HP

Contact: 08705 474747

Tags: dvd universal serial bus components pci express hardware pentium iii ibm dimm