This is quite the month for stupidly expensive electronics. First there was the idiotic iPod Shuffle 3rd Generation, which inexplicably moves the buttons from the player to the headphones, forcing you to use the terrible Apple headphones (I don’t recall anyone complaining about the buttons on the first two Shuffles). Then came the Dell Adamo, which takes the Apple Macbook Air’s thin aluminum design, makes it a bit better (hey look, more than one USB port! And Ethernet!) but gives it low specs (1.2 GHz low voltage Core 2 Duo and just a 1366×768 resolution) for a high price ($1999 minimum).
And today in Japan, they launched the Studio One 19, an iMac competitor all-in-one desktop PC with an optional Multi-Touch display.
The difference here is that while the Studio One 19 looks gorgeous, the price is actually quite reasonable. It starts at just $700, but you will want to upgrade the default Celeron CPU (yes, while the dual-core Celeron is great, they do still make the slow single-core variety). Everything else is upgradeable, including the memory and hard drive (both of which you have access to upgrade yourself – imagine that!). You can opt for a GeForce 9200 or 9400 IGP (both of which are useless for games) and even choose to install a Blu-Ray drive (taking note that the 18.5″ screen only supports up to 720p HDTV).
These won’t be available in North America for another month or so, I’d guess, so we’ll have to wait and see how the final prices compare to the iMac.
Recent Comments