The words 'cutting edge technology' and 'corporate desktop PC' aren't often uttered together, and with very good reason; there's little need for most corporate buyers to make additional expenditures for the latest and greatest when the tested, tried and somewhat cheaper will work just as well. Dell's Optiplex series of desktop machines has generally trod this line, but with the Optiplex GX270 they've branched out into tech that's not quite bleeding edge, but certainly is enough ahead of the game that it should provide a decent future life cycle for the machine, maximising your overall ROI (Return On Investment).
Chief amongst the GX270's bag of tech tricks is the use of Intel's core 865G chipset. The 865G, formerly codenamed Springdale, offers a snappy 800MHz FSB and integrated 8x AGP graphics using Intel's own Extreme Graphics 2 solution, something that's probably overkill for most corporate systems. The 865G also supports dual channel 400MHz DDR RAM; the 2.6GHz P4 unit we examined came with 512MB of memory, with 64MB of that memory on call to be utilised by the integrated graphics chip. The 865G is the smaller brother of Intel's 875 chipset, which offers additional functionality to reduce system latency, but at a higher overall system cost. In effect, you're not getting the most cutting edge performance, but you are investing in some supposedly futureproof technologies. The GX270's 865G implementation comes with integrated Gigabit networking and the option for serial ATA drives if you want particularly high-speed performance.
External Features
Dell seems to have taken a page out of its consumer style book with the GX270's case; the small desktop case we looked at has a snap-away compartment on the front that conceals two of the system's 8 USB 2.0 ports, as well as a headphone jack, something that employees will probably appreciate more than management.
The case itself is Dell's usual black affair, something to keep in mind if you're going to have the unit anywhere near public display; black optical drives are notoriously hard to get hold of if you handle repairs in-house. The unit that we tested came with an integrated floppy drive, but that's something that Dell views as an optional extra these days; the GX270 is set up to be bootable from any USB storage device as a standby.
Service And Support
The GX270 ships with a boot partition containing a comprehensive suite of diagnostic testing tools for every component on the system board, a useful facility for locally or remotely testing system components and hopefully minimising downtime. Likewise, Dell's client configuration utility can be used for remote BIOS and OS updating if you've got a small army of malfunctioning GX270's to deal with. If matters get particularly out of hand, Dell offers a 3 year next business day warranty with the GX270.
Download: Dell Gx270 Drivers
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