This review is part of a group test of Vista-ready desktop PCs.

Acer’s Veriton 1000 is a largely legacy-free PC design in a compact desktop case no larger than a thin-client terminal. This makes the system ideal for business, especially in areas where space is at a premium.

Acer describes the Veriton 1000 as Vista-capable, but the firm said it will not offer the new operating system pre-loaded until March, when it will ship with 1GB memory. Our review system was nevertheless capable of running Vista, albeit at a lower level of performance than HP’s dc5700.

Measuring just 20x25x6cm, the Veriton 1000 can fit discretely on most desktops, and has a screw-on base to stand the system vertically. It requires an external power adapter.

The system runs an Intel Core 2 Duo E6300 processor at 1.86GHz, 512MB up to 2GB memory, and an 80GB Serial ATA hard drive. It relies on embedded graphics functions in its Intel motherboard chipset to drive the display.

When running Windows Vista, the Veriton 1000 was held back by the 512MB memory of our review model and achieved a WEI of 2.0. As tested, this means that it will not run Vista’s flashy Aero graphics, and the system was perceptibly slower at some tasks than HP’s system, although perfectly adequate for productivity work.

Our review model had no optical storage, but shipping models will have a laptop-style DVD/CD-RW. The chassis has four USB slots at the front, another four at the rear, plus a Gigabit Ethernet port, VGA and DVI video connectors, plus audio out jack sockets.

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