The $1299 Micro Express MicroFlex 35B is well suited for office and home users who want a relatively fast system at a frugal price.

With a 2.2-GHz Athlon 64 3500+ processor and 1GB of DDR400 SDRAM, the MicroFlex 35B scored an impressive 101 on our WorldBench 5 test suite. That's the highest score among recently reviewed value systems. The review unit's Sapphire Atlantis Radeon 9800 Pro graphics card with 128MB of DDR SDRAM also performed reasonably well in our graphics tests; it produced 129 frames per second (twelfth among all systems tested) in Return to Castle Wolfenstein and 176 fps (midrange) in Unreal Tournament 2003 at the monitor's maximum resolution of 1280 by 1024.

Our black-and-beige test system came with a dual-layer DVD±RW drive, a floppy drive, a media-card reader, and a 250GB hard drive. The MicroFlex 35B includes two USB 2.0 ports and two audio ports (for microphone and headphones) under a flap on the top panel, making them easy to reach, even if you place the case on the floor. On the back panel are five additional USB 2.0 ports and two FireWire ports.

I found it easy to open the case (which has a built-in lock) using thumbscrews, and to access the neatly organized interior components, with three of the six externally accessible drive bays available and three of the four internal drive bays open. There are also two open memory slots and five open PCI slots. However, two of these PCI slots are not available because the graphics card's fan extends over one slot and USB and FireWire ports occupy the cover bracket of another.

Our review unit came with an LG Flatron L1710B 17-inch LCD monitor that produced legible but not extremely sharp text, especially at small sizes. Graphics generally looked fine overall, but the color and details in some images were slightly dark when using the monitor's default settings. DVD movies also looked a bit dark, but I found it relatively easy to adjust the image quality by using the monitor's LightView function, which let me choose an optimal image preset from a variety of choices, such as text, movie, or photo.

The Creative Inspire P5800 5.1 speaker system, which includes a handy remote control for adjusting volume and bass level, provided solid (but not breathtaking) sound during our CD music and DVD movie tests. The Microsoft wireless keyboard (which includes a variety of useful shortcut keys) and wireless optical mouse both functioned flawlessly. The built-in wrist rest for the keyboard is a welcome addition. The useful documentation includes a system user's manual as well as various component guides (motherboard, monitor), plus a 300-page book (from Que) on using Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition that probably only absolute beginners will appreciate.

The Micro Express MicroFlex 35B offers enough speed, power, and flexibility to satisfy most budget-conscious office and home users.

Richard Jantz

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