The modern AIO (All-in-one) desktop PCs are incredible space saver if you won’t want huge boxes taking all your desk real estate. The all new Lenovo Ideacentre A320 that we are covering here is one of the fashionable PCs that we’ve had in our lab. The Lenovo Ideacentre A320 has a lustrous white cease and the chrome trim about the boundaries of the 21.5 in screen gives the A320 incredibly stunning looks. It should be noted that the A320 isn’t a touchscreen model and hence the device must be controlled using the keyboard and mouse supplied with it. The slim stand of the Lenovo Ideacentre A320 has the dispensation unit, all the exterior connectors and at the same time the power hole for all the exteriors small mains adapter ‘element'. There also is a vigorous pillar supporting the monitor at the back right end side of the stand, and it allows the screen to pivot vertically and  [...]

Gateway SX2851-41 is a fast performer and I was pretty impressed by its speed. It is as good as the predecessor, SX2850-03 and it makes good sense because they both have the same CPU, same amount of memory and the motherboard too is the same. There are some deviations in performance but that can be attributed to the firmware and variability in testing. I would recommend you the Gateway SX2851-41 if you are looking for a slim tower for use in your living room. Gateway SX2851-41 performs most of the light duty and day-to-day media editing tasks with good speed. I tried running HD movies that they ran pretty well too. The newer games won’t run well but the older ones might be playable with a few hiccups. I played Left 4 Dead 2 which had a tolerable experience but I had to lower the resolution and image quality on Fallout: New Vegas. If you are really into games, I would  [...]

A lot of Windows Users have been seen or rather heard wishing for a dedicated stop for their downloadable software; something that can be browsed easily, and has ratings, reviews, categories and a straightforward purchase option. If you are a Windows User then you also would have asked for the same, at one point or the other. Haven’t you? A lot of software firms have been working in order to develop a software shop for Windows just like the Apple App Store. And we finally got the result in the form of “Avenue”, which is an brilliantly fast and instantly available alternative for a fully operational Windows apps. We also recently saw the introduction of Pokki, which is an App store that brings mobile-style applets on different PC desktop. Netvolution, the developers of Avenue App Store for Windows will be offering the Windows users a straightforward mean of finding and downloading  [...]

An already excellent all-in-one computer has been improved upon. Apple has some options from this computer if you want better performance. The RAM can be upgraded up to 16 GB and there is larger platter hard drive options too. You can also put in a solid state drive and for graphic card, there is option for Radeon HD 6970 3D card. The default RAM of the graphic card is 1 GB and you can increase it to 2 GB in the configuration. Of course, Apple will be charging you more money for these upgrades and these components cost more than the Windows based ones. A very significant option here is that Apple lets you trade out Apple Magic Mouse for Magic Trackpad for no extra charge. This is good because the option to opt out of the mouse wasn’t available before. Thunderbolt ports have replaced the single Mini DisplayPort on the previous Apple iMac 27-inch and rest of the external  [...]

HP TouchSmart 610q 1065qd is a touch screen based all-in-one and a unique feature of this system is that it comes with a tilting stand. You can tilt it significantly and can experiment with the touch screen technology for better using experience. This computer is really fast thanks to the Core i7 quad core multithreaded processor. For game enthusiasts, there is 2GB AMD Radeon HD 5570 graphics card which can play all games at good resolution. Competition to this is Sony Vaio L21SFX which comes with a 2 TB drive as compared to HP’s 1 GB. Sony’s computer comes with Blu-ray burner and HP gives a DVD burner/Blu-ray player combo drive. That said, I would accept the superior performance of HP’s system and give up some feature trade offs. As compared to Apple’s Core i5 based iMac, the HP system was faster in my Cinebench and iTunes test. HP TouchSmart 610q 1065qd is a good system for any  [...]

HP TouchSmart 300 is a good performer in terms of productivity but it is not as good as the higher end HP TouchSmart 600. I did some multitasking and was pretty satisfied with what the machine had to offer. Compared to the Acer Aspire Z5610, the HP system was slower in my Photoshop and iTunes test. However, in the Cinebench multicore tests, this machine was second to only Apple’s iMac. The big advantage that such all-in-one machines have over full fledged desktops is that there is no desktop tower and hence you save on space. However, desktops are a lot cheaper too and they are more versatile. While reviewing, I was disappointed to see that the HP TouchSmart 300 didn’t have as many features as that on the higher end sibling. The biggest feature missing here is HDMI port. This port lets you connect cable box, game console or any of HDMI based video source and you  [...]

Dell Inspiron One 2305 is the second big attempt by this manufacturer is all-in-one desktops and it really impressed me for a lot of reasons. First, the design is really clean and this is probably the best Windows based all-in-one system. My review model was configured for $1,149 and it had a combination of HDMI port and Blu-ray drive. The feature set is also simple with a relatively effective touch application. The performance is quite slow and hence I can’t really recommend it for anything more than basic productivity. Also, I wished that Dell didn’t include the annoying software of DataSafe pop-up. That said, I think this is a good successor to the XPS One that we saw a couple of years ago. If you are looking for an entertainment based all-in-one, get this system. Apple iMac is still the best when it comes to such all-in-one computers but I would certainly keep the Dell  [...]

Gateway SX2850-33 compact desktop PC is a slim line desktop featuring fast Core i3 processor and Wi-Fi connectivity. The inclusion of latter makes me recommend this desktop for your living room as there would be less cable clutter. In my lab tests, this desktop performed better than competing desktops and also other PCs in Gateway's own SX2850-33 series. There were some exceptions though; for instance, the  Dell Inspiron i570 was faster in my multicore CPU test because of its quad core AMD processor but the Intel Core i3 530 CPU in the Gateway machine is outperforms it in every other test. The Dell chip's edge is minimal. Most of the living room processors are relatively capable but the Gateway SX2850-33 better performance is day-to-day tasks. This machine was flawless in HD movie playback, at least for QuickTime and HD YouTube content. There were no problems with less demanding Hulu  [...]