Beanstalks from HCL

The most striking thing about both these PCs is their looks.

They’re both housed in very sleek and attractive looking cabinets. In fact,

both PCs seem to have been designed around some theme. The Elite has a nice

dual-color scheme combining silver with blue, and the Ultima is off-white and

extremely curvaceous.

The

Elite’s cabinet, however, is so compact that it leaves little room for

expansion. There is only one PCI slot on the motherboard, which too is almost

impossible to use. So this isn’t a good choice for people who want to pump up

their PC with lots of hardware. It’s powered by a PIII/650 on an Intel 810

motherboard. Audio and video are integrated on the motherboard. However, the

integrated video hampers its performance in 3D applications as well as games. On

an average, we got frame rates of about 17 fps in Quake III Arena. The business

applications front was slightly better, since most applications are more

processor intensive than graphics dependent.

The Ultima, on the other hand, is much more powerful and has

plenty of room for expansion. It’s powered by a PIII/650, 128 MB RAM, 20.4 GB

hard disk, 17" monitor, and a Riva TNT2 Ultra AGP card with 32 MB VRAM.

Surprisingly, it has two sound cards, one of which is onboard. It also includes

a DVD drive to enrich the multimedia experience. It’s good in performance too,

be it games or business applications.

Both PCs come with a good software bundle. The Ultima is

priced at Rs 79,990. Even though this is high, its performance and features

justify it. The Elite is an average performer and slightly expensive at Rs

59,990.