Meet the new age desktops

Jul 12, 2010 |

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New age desktops

Best touch input in HP TouchSmart

Among touch-based all-in-one personal computers, HP TouchSmart 600 offers the best implementation of touch input and robust standalone home entertainment device. With well-though-out touch apps, HP’s new all-in-one is not the fastest new all-in-one, but it has the most comprehensive and compelling set of features of any all-in-one launching alongside Windows 7.

Though it suffers slow performance occasionally, HP has made the TouchSmart 600 home entertainment-friendly by adding HDMI and composite audio/video inputs. It matches Sony in capability to connect and switch between external video sources easily.

It means you can connect multiple external video sources to the TouchSmart, such as game consoles, a cable box, or HD cameras, and switch between them and your Windows desktop seamlessly.

TouchSmart follows the same standard HP’s black plastic exterior. Though it does not match the iMac in design, it is visually more appealing than its other competitors.

Apple: The fastest all-in-one desktops

Despite being in the news for its portable gadgets such as iPhone and iPad, Apple does not intend to leave any ground in the personal computer space as well. Its recent launch Apple iMac 27-inch — the fastest all-in-one desktop — reinforces its presence in this space.

Apart from a 27-inch monitor and 2.8GHz Intel Core i7 processor, iMac27 comes with a display of 2,560x1,440 resolution, 6GB 800MHz DDR2 SDRAM, one terabyte 7,200 rpm hard drive. Though it does not provide a TV tuner and Blu-ray burner, the Apple new desktop has gigabit Ethernet 802.11n Bluetooth. Apple also added a faster graphics card with more memory to the $1,999 model by way of the 512MB ATI Radeon HD 4850. iMac, which runs on Apple OS X Snow Leopard 10.6.3 operating system, however, fails as home entertainment, and lacks the touch input feature, which some of the all-in-ones, including HP and Sony.

Sony Vaio best bet for Windows lovers

If you are a fan of Windows, Sony Vaio L117FX is the best bet for you. The reason: It offers strong performance among Windows-based all-in-ones. This model retains and improves on many of the features that critics liked about older entertainment-focused models. Vaio has a wall-mountable screen, which makes the model fit into your living room.

The picture-in-picture support — which distinguishes Sony from its competitors — multi touch support, Blu-ray drive and TV tuner make it a relatively complete home media hub. These features are backed by Core 2 Quad Q8400s 2.66GHz processor, 6GB RAM and one terabyte hard drive. This makes Sony Vaio L117FX the most perfect combination of home entertainment and computing capability among Windows-based all-in-ones. In addition to the new hybrid look, Sony includes some of the features such as the HDMI input, which companies like Apple, Asus, and HP imitated. However, new iMac, which comes for a little more bucks with a bigger 27-inch screen, could give Sony much tougher competition.

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