Dell OptiPlex 745 Review

A fold-down handle helps you pull up the riser assembly to insert or remove expansion cards. Two of the four DIMM memory slots are fairly reachable, but the other two hide under the drive bays: The internal bay at the bottom of the stack holds the 80GB Samsung SATA hard disk, while front-accessible bays hold the DVD burner and flash-card reader (or, for $10 less, the floppy drive in the press-kit photo at left).

Two USB 2.0 ports accompany headphone and microphone jacks on the front of the case, with six more USB ports -- plus parallel, serial, Gigabit Ethernet, and audio line-in and -out ports -- at the rear. As mentioned, an internal PCI card offers two FireWire ports and the ATI graphics card packs S-Video and DVI ports, the latter provided with a Y cable to drive two VGA displays.

You can use one of the USB ports to plug in a connecting cable for the Dell 1707FPV display, which serves as a four-port USB hub itself. Definitely an upscale instead of run-of-the-mill office-cubicle monitor, the 1,280 by 1,024-pixel flat panel is an excellent match for the desktop, with both analog VGA and digital DVI inputs and an audio jack for an optional speaker bar ($29) that fits beneath its slim bezel.

Though its 25-millisecond response time is a snail's pace for PC gamers, the 17-inch screen delivers sharp text and bright colors, helped by a rated 280 nits of brightness and stellar 1,500:1 contrast ratio. Its base is helpfully height-adjustable as well as tilt- and swivel-capable, and it pivots between landscape and portrait orientation.

Our only stumble with the 1707FPV was that Dell doesn't supply a portrait/landscape switching utility such as Portrait Display's Pivot Pro, so you must use the ATI driver's Catalyst control center to turn the screen image 90 degrees and back. The latter works well once you burrow into its menus to set up hotkeys for toggling horizontal and vertical modes, but we wound up fumbling with up-is-left, down-is-right mouse maneuvers once or twice in the process.

The monitor was our favorite of the OptiPlex peripherals: Dell's base-model keyboard proved adequate, but a plasticky typing feel kept it off our win list. And we can't believe that modern IT managers would be so mean as to saddle workers with the scratchy rolling-ball mechanical rather than optical mouse shipped with our system. Speaking of peripherals, a biometric fingerprint reader to bolster TPM and logon security is a $39 option.

Almost as Good As a Key to the Executive Washroom

We've already said that PC gamers are unlikely customers for the 745, and the system's 3D graphics performance confirms that despite the Radeon X1300 Pro card. The Dell managed a pretty good 97 frames per second in the venerable Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory (XGA resolution) and 29 fps in the formidable Gun Metal 2 DirectX benchmark at 1,280 by 1,024 with 4X antialiasing. But its Futuremark 3Dmark06 score at the same settings was a mundane 1,001.

But office workers aren't supposed to play games, and the OptiPlex is otherwise strong enough to survive many more than its product-cycle 15 months of office work (except for needing a memory upgrade if the office switches to Vista). Generally speaking, the compact desktop's performance matched or topped that of the top third of today's business laptops, such as notebooks with Core Duo rather than Core 2 Duo CPUs but higher clock speeds.

BAPCo's SysMark 2004 yielded a rating of 232 (Internet Content Creation 301; Office Productivity 179). The Dell's PCMark05 score was 4,487 (CPU 4,784; memory 4,313; hard disk 4,339; graphics 2,793). The E6300 processor helped render Cinebench 9.5's sample scene in 38 seconds.

Our system's software bundle included Wave Systems' Embassy Trust suite to get the most from the TPM hardware; a full set of administrative IT management tools; CyberLink PowerDVD and Roxio CD/DVD utilities; and a 15-month subscription to McAfee Security Center. Microsoft Office Basic, Small Business, and Professional are $145, $275, and $345, respectively, with free upgrades to Office 2007. The standard warranty includes three years of next-business-day on-site service. Stepping up to same-day service plus priority phone support adds $218.

In just five months, the Core 2 Duo has zoomed from upstart to first choice for anyone planning at least a year or 18 months of productivity from a PC purchase. Small businesses shouldn't deny themselves the chip's performance, and corporate offices shouldn't deny themselves its power savings. The OptiPlex 745 is too pricey if you're shopping for a minimal Word, Outlook, and Excel box, but it's better than a Christmas bonus for any employee.