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December 1996 Reviews This Month
By James E. Powell
AST continues to amaze me. Two new entries in the company's Advantage series-the 9310 for SOHO users and the 9312 for teleconferencing-are solid performers that sport a good price.
From the outside looking in, the systems are almost twins. Both start with a Pentium 166MHz CPU, a standard 24MB of EDO RAM (expandable to 128MB), a 2.5GB Western Digital Caviar hard drive and 256KB of pipeline-burst cache. The motherboard has built-in 3-D wavetable sound and 64-bit ATI CT Mach 64 video with 3-D graphics and 2MB of EDO VRAM. The hard disk occupies one of the three internal bays, and two of the four external bays are taken by the Torisan 8X CD-ROM and the 3.5-inch floppy drive.
In both models, the mini-tower case attaches with three screws. As with the other Advantage models, you have to remove a screw from the bottom of the case to access the expansion slots, which sit vertically rather than horizontally. It's unusual to see cards hang upside down, but it works.
The standard connections are on the back of the mini-tower: a PS/2 keyboard and mouse port, one parallel and two serial ports, a joystick port, and line in, line out and speaker jacks. The 9312 also has connections for an analog Intel video camera and an external video source (antenna or cable). It also has flash BIOS and Plug-and-Play support.
The bundled Silitek model IMD 9000 400-dot-per-inch scanner makes the 9310 a very good home-office choice. To capitalize on the single-sheet-fed scanner's capability, AST includes Presto PageManager, CardScan SE (for business cards), DocuMagix' PaperMaster SE and TWAIN-compliant graphics applications.
For communications, the 9310's Boca 33.6Kbps fax/voice modem with a full-duplex speakerphone takes one slot. The 9312 offers a 28.8Kbps DSVD modem instead. The 9310 has two free PCI slots and four free ISA slots; the 9312 uses one additional PCI slot for a combination video capture/TV tuner card.
You'll also find a pair of Labtec speakers, a pedestal microphone, a two-button mouse and a Windows 95 keyboard with each system.
The 9310 is stocked with plenty of SOHO software: Lotus SmartSuite 96, Turbo Publisher (an entry-level desktop publisher), Parson Technology's Business Law Partner (for legal forms) and the New Grolier Multimedia Encyclopedia 1996 Edition.
The 9312 includes SmartSuite and the Grolier Encyclopedia, plus video-related software. Intel's Intercast software lets you view TV or a combination TV/Web page when tuned to a broadcaster (such as CNN) using Intercast broadcast technology. Intel's VideoPhone, which facilitates videoconferences, is also preloaded. While the picture is somewhat choppy, it works over standard telephone lines. The 9312 also provides infrared remote control and application control. The receiver plugs into a serial port and lets you call up Intercast, VideoPhone, Syncro Multimedia Connect's telephone answering system, Windows Help or the Start menu. It can also control the TV channel and volume.
Plug everything into the 9312, and it's smooth sailing from the get-go. Except for a few Intercast bugs that AST was addressing at press time, everything worked right out of the box.
Both units turned in very good scores on our benchmarks. The 9310 ran at 303MIPS in our Wintune test, standard for a Pentium 166. The Word macro test took an average of 18.33 seconds to complete, and the Excel macro finished in 12.67 seconds. The 9312 model was only slightly slower: 296.67MIPS, 19 seconds for Word and 13 seconds for Excel.
My only complaint is that the hard drive on my preproduction 9310 wasn't partitioned properly, so only 2.1GB was available. The other 400MB should have been assigned the next drive letter but wasn't. A software package called PartitionMagic (not included) solved the oversight. AST Research was aware of the error and should have it fixed in shipping models.
Even without a monitor, these Advantage systems offer better value than our formerly recommended NEC PowerMate V100. Each Advantage system features Pentium 166-level performance, solid construction, reliable, brand-name parts and a reasonable price.
If you want to get started with teleconferencing, the 9312 has everything you'll need, preconfigured for success. The Advantage 9310 offers well-chosen SOHO software and a scanner. Broad appeal to SOHO and family users combined with solid performance are two reasons to put the 9310 on our Recommended List.
-- Info File --
AST Advantage 9310
Price: $2,499 (without monitor)
Pros: Speed; solid construction; reliable components
Cons: Hard drive not properly partitioned on preproduction
model
Platforms: 3X 95 NT
AST Research
800-876-4278, 714-727-4141
WinMag Box Score 4.5
-- Info File --
AST Advantage 9312
Price: $2,599 (without monitor)
Pros: Speed; price; easy setup
Cons: Preproduction bugs in Intel software
Platforms: 3X 95 NT
AST Research
800-876-4278, 714-727-4141
WinMag Box Score 4.5
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