Mick Lockey

Dell Dimension 4600

We saw great image quality from the 17-inch E171FP analog LCD monitor that accompanied our review system. Text looked sharp and evenly focused at all sizes, while colors appeared lifelike, with evenly saturated tones in our photo test screen, in a DVD movie, and during a session of Return to Castle Wolfenstein. As part of a new case design for Dell's midrange Dimension line, the 4600 has eight USB 2.0 ports, more than on most value (and some power) systems: six on the back and two up front. An audio port for connecting headphones sits next to the front USB ports.
The compact 4600 does not have the tool-less accessibility of its predecessor, the Dimension 4500, although opening the case is easy: Just depress a thick L-shaped lever and lift off the side panel. You'll need a screwdriver to add a PCI card or a hard drive; unlike the 4500 series, which secured expansion cards and drives with innovative quick-release mechanisms, the 4600 series uses screws. Our test configuration had only one available drive bay (a vertically mounted internal bay), and it's a struggle to use it. You must remove four screws (two on the bottom of the case and two inside) and take out the bay holding the existing hard drive along with the empty bay that's crammed up against the front of the case. The two open PCI slots are reasonably easy to access, but to reach the two open memory sockets, you must push aside a snarl of data and power cables.
The Dimension 4600 we tested came with a 2.8-GHz Pentium 4 processor and 512MB of DDR400 memory. It earned a PC WorldBench 4 score of 122, about average for similarly configured systems. The ATI Radeon 9000 Pro graphics card is not a top-of-the-line board, but it yielded solid frame rates in our gaming tests. And it's perfectly fine for playing games at moderate resolution, especially considering that the bundled LCD monitor won't display anything higher than 1280-by-1024 resolution. It has a combination DVI/analog-out port (you use an adapter to hook up an analog monitor), plus S-Video-out and composite-out ports to output video to a TV. Our test system relied on integrated sound with a pair of Harman/Kardon HK395 speakers and an accompanying subwoofer--a good fit for a midrange computer. On vocal tracks and a DVD movie, the thudding bass notes didn't blow us away, but trebles sounded relatively crisp and clean. We like them better than Dell's alternative speaker option, the much weaker Altec Lansing ADA215 set. But since the integrated sound supports 5.1-channel speakers, audiophiles yearning for immersive gaming or DVD sound should consider a set, such as the Altec Lansing ADA995 speakers that Dell offers for an additional $210. The keyboard comes with a palm rest and eight programmable hot-keys. It also has a well-laid-out set of audio keys, including a large knob for adjusting volume settings. The home-oriented software bundle that came with our review system included Microsoft Works Suite 2003 (with Word 2002); Encyclopedia Britannica 2003; and both Money 2003 and Quicken 2002 New User Edition.
This Dimension 4600 doesn't boast cutting-edge components, but it does hit a sweet spot in balancing price with performance. If you want the more accessible case design of the 4500, however, you'll need to go with a more expensive model.

Buying Information

Dell Dimension 4600 $ http://