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The IBM NetVista S42 offers exactly what you'd expect from a corporate PC: a compact, if unattractive, design; solid application performance; weak graphics hardware; and IT-friendly deployment and support toolsIt also serves up a few welcome surprises, such as six USB 2.0 ports and a pivoting, flat-panel monitorOn the other hand, what's a DVD-ROM drive doing in a business machine? We'd gladly take a CD-ROM instead, provided IBM would trade for a mouse with a scroll wheelBeyond a few such hardware missteps, the NetVista S42 is a dream for IT departmentsTop it off with one of the best warranties in the business, bolstered by 24-hour, toll-free tech support, and the S42 is an ugly duckling that turns into a swan

	Back in black.

IBM usually opts for function over form, and the NetVista S42 reflects that attitude with its boxy, generally unexciting, matte-black desktop caseFortunately, it nails the function part, with cubicle-friendly compactness (roughly 3.5 by 12 by 14 inches) and a bracket that allows it to stand vertically instead of sitting proneWhat's more, the front of the case offers a headphone jack and four USB 2.0 ports, which are probably more than a corporate user would need but are welcome nonethelessThe headphone jack is a particularly nice touch since the S42 doesn't include speakers, though it does have an audio chipYou can listen to music CDs or any necessary business-related audio without disturbing your neighbors

The S42's diminutive size belies its expansion capabilities, which include legacy ports (two serial, one parallel), two additional USB ports at the rear, and a pair of PCI slotsThe latter are mounted horizontally on a riser, so you can install full-sized expansion cards; many compact cases limit you to half-height cards, which can be harder to come byThe S42 also has a pair of DIMM slots; both are easily accessible and only one is occupied

Enough ports to appease the corporate user.

PCI slots mounted on a riser let you install full-size cards.

It's appreciably easy to get inside the S42's case--just remove a pair of thumbscrewsHowever, the S42 isn't quite as modular as, say, the Compaq Evo D500 or some HP corporate systems we've testedTo access the hard drive, for instance, you must first remove the enclosure containing the floppy and DVD-ROM drives, and that requires a screwdriverStill, an efficient IT staffer could replace a hard drive in 10 minutes

As you might expect from a corporate PC, the NetVista S42 has hardware that's more attuned to business software than to video and 3D applicationsThus, it includes a 2.4GHz Pentium 4 processor with a 533MHz front-side bus and 256MB of DDR SDRAMP4 processor speeds on the S42 line range from 1.8GHz to 2.53GHzThe integrated Intel graphics chip shares the memory, however, so don't plan on running any software that relies heavily on graphicsThis is a system designed with the likes of Microsoft Office in mind, not Adobe Photoshop

The S42's star attraction is its IBM T560 flat-panel monitor, which not only delivers razor-sharp images and color to die for but also pivots 90 degrees to provide a portrait displayIts positioning arm gives you ample control over the tilt and even the height of the screen, which could prove useful for workers who stand at a counter rather than sit at a deskThe T560 can also be mounted on a wall

The small case leaves no room for an AGP slot.

A monitor that turns on a dime.

The keyboard, though surprisingly light, maintains the excellent feel and feedback that we've come to expect from IBM keysAlas, it lacks quick-launch and volume-control buttons, which should be standard equipment on any PC--corporate or otherwiseWhat's worse is the cheap-feeling two-button mouse that has no scroll wheel--an unforgivable oversight

We're surprised to find a DVD-ROM drive in a corporate system, as a CD-RW drive seems more practicalIronically, IBM does offer the S42 with a CD-ROM for slightly less money, but a CD-RW isn't an option

To help large corporations simplify the deployment of multiple systems, IBM offers a contract service called ImageUltra, which loads a custom image on each machine prior to shippingAnother IT-friendly feature, Rapid Restore, enables push-button backup and restoration of the entire hard driveThe S42 is the first NetVista product to come with Rapid Restore preloaded, which saves you from having to download it to each machineThe NetVista also has a robust set of security features embedded in the BIOS

Application performance
In order to keep the NetVista S42 design to such a small form factor, IBM had to make at least one significant compromise: the S42 series uses a graphics engine that is integrated into the Intel 845G/GL chipsetWhen system memory and graphics memory are shared, a noticeable performance penalty on the memory subsystem is evidentThe 2.4GHz P4-based NetVista S42 that we tested performed more like a 2.26GHz P4-based systemWe saw a similar issue with the 2.4GHz P4-based Sony VAIO Digital Studio PCV-RX860, which also integrates its graphics engine into the motherboard chipsetAt least the S42 uses a speedier hard disk subsystem than the RX860, so the S42 offers slightly better application performanceThe S42's performance doesn't quite match its specs, but it has enough oomph for most mainstream applications