After a few false starts, Dell has finally managed to deliver to IT Week Labs one of the dual-core desktop systems it launched this summer.

My delight at the compact small form factor case of the OptiPlex 745 was tempered slightly when I opened the accompanying monitor box to find a clunky old 17in CRT display. I sincerely hope that this is not a representative sample of what Dell regards as suitable for the modern business desktop.

With the release of Windows Vista just around the corner, I took the opportunity to install the most recent build available (RC2), and see how it performed on the OptiPlex, which represents the state-of-the-art for corporate desktop systems at the moment.

The results seem to suggest that newly bought systems will be adequate for Windows Vista, but no more than that, and so companies might, perhaps, want to wait a while before any upgrade to the new operating system.

After installation, Vista automatically runs an analysis of the computer's performance, and generates a Windows Experience Index (WEI) for overall performance, plus the performance of major subsystems such as processor, hard disk and graphics.

When RC2 booted up for the first time, I was somewhat puzzled to find that it rated the OptiPlex 745 with a WEI of just 1.0. This is lower than the 3.0 scored by the Fujitsu-Siemens Pentium 4 system I have been using to evaluate Vista so far.

Fortunately, the cause soon became apparent – RC2 had not installed suitable drivers for the embedded graphics functions of the Intel Q965 chipset, and it had defaulted to a standard VGA driver. Clicking on 'Update Driver' in Device Manager did not fix the problem, even when Vista was allowed to check back with Microsoft for a solution.

A quick search on Google located suitable drivers on Intel's web site, but it seems odd that Vista is this close to launch, but does not already include drivers for what is now Intel's mainstream business chipset.

With the new drivers in place, the WEI rose to a more respectable 3.4. This represents the score of the lowest performing subsystem, which was still the graphics – the processor and disk scores were both above 5.

However, a score of 3.4 is enough for users to enable the Aero user interface, which renders parts of the on-screen windows translucent, so that you can see what is behind them. The effect makes on-screen windows appear to be edged with smoked glass. Windows also blur open and closed, as if appearing out of the mist towards the user.

The neatest part of Aero is the way it lets you switch between running applications. Instead of Alt + Tab, you press the Windows key + Tab, and Vista morphs the open Windows into a 3D stack viewed from an isometric projection. Hitting Tab cycles through the open windows, like flicking through the cards in a Rolodex.

But all of this is just bells and whistles as far as most business customers will be concerned. All buyers need to know is that a system such as this will handle Windows Vista, but they should probably treat this as the baseline configuration when specifying new systems.

For the record, our review unit has a 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo processor, 1GB memory and a 160GB Serial ATA hard drive. This is more than adequate for Windows XP, but buyers would be well advised to include double the memory, especially if they expect to be using these systems for more than a couple for years into the future.

19 Oct 2006