MidWest Micro Business Solutions 400

MidWest Micro Business Solutions 400

Make no mistake about it--the $2199 Business Solutions 400 is a serious machine with fun on its mind. Running Windows NT, the system scored 233 on our PC WorldBench 98 tests--about 2 percent faster than the PII-400 ClientPro 400 from Micron. Not only will the Business Solutions 400 get work done during the business day, but its multimedia enhancements (including the first pair of Universal Serial Bus speakers we've seen in a Top 20 system and all the RAM you'll likely need) will keep this machine rocking into the night.

The PC's Matrox Millennium G200 graphics board claimed the top spot among AGP graphics boards in our November Top 10 Graphics Boards chart. The USB-based Altec Lansing ADA-305 speakers come as a three-piece set with a boxy subwoofer and a pair of Frank Lloyd Wright­inspired satellite speakers. While the USB speakers sound great and don't require a sound card to work, MidWest Micro also packs an Ensoniq AudioPCI sound card, so you don't have to throw out your non-USB speakers.

Though the Business Solutions 400's WorldBench score of 233 is higher than the 228 earned by Micron's ClientPro 400, two other PII-400 Windows NT systems (with only 64MB of memory) scored better: Dell's OptiPlex GX1 400 is nearly 5 percent faster at 244, while Sys Technology's Performance Pro 400BA scored a blazing 252, more than 8 percent faster than the MidWest Micro. Nevertheless, the MidWest Micro system costs about $400 less than the faster ones from Dell and Sys Technology.

The Business Solutions 400 fits well into any corporate environment whose plans don't include PC management. The system comes with a 3Com ethernet adapter for quick connections to the corporate LAN, but it's missing management features like DMI 2.0 support. On the other hand, it's quick and easy to archive important business files on this PC. MidWest Micro bundles a SuperDisk drive in place of the standard 1.44MB floppy disk, so you can read and write to standard floppies as well as to 120MB SuperDisk media.

Servicing and upgrading the Business Solutions 400 is simple enough: You can open the case without tools, and you have unfettered access to every slot and bay. Four of the seven drive bays are available, as are three of the six expansion slots. The PC comes with a great set of manuals that provide quick out-of-the-box setup instructions (in both a colorful, well-diagrammed manual and a large foldout poster), plus more technical upgrade information, such as a motherboard guide.

MidWest Micro offers a parts warranty that covers the CPU and main RAM for five years (other parts for three years), a three-year labor warranty, and around-the-clock tech support. We've received little feedback on the reliability of MidWest Micro systems, but the quality of the vendor's support appears to be good. In our anonymous support calls to tech support, the staff seemed knowledgeable, though they rarely answered our questions unless we supplied a serial number.

SUMMARY

PRO: Inexpensive, comes with outstanding speakers and SuperDisk drive CON: Performance is somewhat lackluster for a PII-400 running Win NT