Buy a disk drive for your Commodore 64 and the choice is either the 1541 or the 1541 because, so far, none of the 'clones' work well enough. But the new Excelerator Plus looks like putting things to right. And, at £159.95, it's that much cheaper.

Now I know why the 1541 disk drive looks bigger than PC Plod's shoebox. It's got a dirty great power transformer in it. The Excelerator Plus manages to look slimmer than an F-Plan diet because the power pack is external. So you save space on your desk but add to the spaghetti under it.

Sleekness is the most striking thing about the Excelerator. It's about a third of the depth of the 1541, very much shorter and well ahead in the Beauty Contest stakes.

Despite its diminutive size, the drive is sturdily built (in Taiwan). The outer casing is beige painted metal, with a cream plastic fascia. So it will match more the new C64's livery than the elephant-grey old one.

On the outside, there's a neat drive door mechanism more reminiscent of the new Commodore drives. The feel is firm and confident. Only one gripe here, there's no spring mechanism to push the disk out when you lift the catch. Unlike the 1541, there's only one indicator light at the front. This is an LED which, clever thing that it is, changes from green to red when a disk access is being made.

Round the back, you'll find the usual two serial sockets, power socket and on/off switch. Underneath (where you can get at them easily) are two DIP switches that let you change the drive's device number - the choice is device 8, 9, 10 or 11.

Inside, you won't find an elastic band like you do with the 1541. The Excelerator has a direct drive mechanism and that may be why it doesn't chug and grind and churn as much as the 1541. This may even result in less wear and tear on your precious disks. It'll certainly save the drive some grief.

Enough of all that, let's put it to work. I was going to compile a huge list of loading times compared with the 1541 drive. I haven't bothered, not because I was too lazy to do any timing but because they were pretty much the same.

UK distributor, Evesham Micros, reckons the Excelerator is 20% faster. I find that hard to believe. It's about a couple of seconds faster on a long load. There was only one notable exception to this: the Excelerator manages to format disks 25 seconds quicker - don't ask me why.

For the most part, disk access times were pretty much the same. In fact, I got pretty bored with it all. Load and save a 15K Basic program - same timings. Load all the commercial disk software I could throw at it - same timings. The Excelerator behaved admirably throughout. It does exactly what the 1541 does, but no faster.

Equally impressive was the ease with which it handled the Unicopy program on Commodore's 1570/1571 utility disk. With the 1541 set as drive 8 and the Excelerator as 9, I found no problem copying disk files straight from one drive to the other.

This may sound too good to be true. It is. No 'compatible' disk drive will ever behave exactly like the 1541 simply because Commodore has a copyright on the 1541's ROM. Making a disk drive identical to the 1541 would end up involving the boys from LA Law.

The Excelerator emulates the 1541's GCR format (174K formatted capacity, 256 bytes/sector, 35 tracks etc) and behaves just like the 1541 in terms of disk commands (even those on the C64 DOS wedge).

Of all the disks I tested, it came a cropper on only one - Elite. And the reason for that is that game's turbo loading system. That may not be disastrous since there aren't many turboload disks around anyway. But beware, if you do have any disks with 'funny' loaders, try before you buy.

That said, I enjoyed using the Excelerator. It's quiet, compact, well-behaved and sturdy enough to give a feeling of reliability. Whether it is or not I'll tell you next year - when the guarantee runs out.

Considering that it's around £40 cheaper than the new 1541C, the Excelerator has got to be worth a look. And it deserves a pat on the DOS ROM for coming closer than any other 'clone' to being a real 1541.