Future Power - Power Series P3-500

Performance

We configured an system identical to the Power Series with the removal of the NEWQ Gold, ABIT BH6 and the 5400RPM Western Digital HDD and instead used the BX6 Revision II and a 7200RPM 18GB Western Digital HDD for approximately the same price.  This system was dubbed the AnandTech P3-500 Test bed, and the results are compared below.

ZD Business Winstone 99

BAPCo SYSMark98

Business Disk Winmark 99 (MB/s)

High End Disk Winmark 99 (MB/s)

Isn't it amazing what a faster hard drive can do?

Software Bundle

The system ships pre-configured with Microsoft Windows 98SE with all of the latest drivers and patches. A free copy of Lotus Smart Suite Millennium edition comes pre-installed as well. Unfortunately, all of the annoying task bars and systray menu items are loaded by default, so the first time you boot up the machine you get an annoying surprise with all of the applications that load their way into your systray.

For a more thorough description of the packages included in Smart Suite, click here.

A copy of Norton Anti-Virus also comes pre-loaded on the system, a very helpful utility indeed.

As far as backups are concerned, Future Power provides you with a copy of Windows 98 SE and a CDR with all of the sound/video drivers, but no backups of Smart Suite or Norton AV are provided with the system. Usually pre-built systems at least provide you with a recovery CD, but in this case you are left high and dry if you are forced to format and haven't backed up.