Dell's dinky designer desktop Dell has unveiled a range of miniature PCs aimed at anyone looking to minimise their electricity consumption and maximise their desktop space. Dell_Studio_hybrid_01 Dell's Hybrid Studio desktop: pick a sleeve, any sleeve According to the manufacturer, the Studio Hybrid PC line is “energy efficient” because it uses roughly …
The £399 version is a bit more basic than the one you mention ... 160GB disk, celeron processor, USB keyboard. Plus, took a bit of time for me to spot how to get to it as its not listed in the standard configs (usual Dell technique - advertise low price then on web page steer customers to more expensive versions while keeping the low price version "available" but not always easy yo find!)
Think I'm still waiting for the Eee Box though!
For a camcorder? Why didn't you say the most obvious... a TV!
Unless there is a reason this won't work on a TV, if so, it should have been mentioned.
But, for £400, compact media player, nice. Media player with BluRay even nicer (yes, but for more).
Whats the Intel® Celeron™ Processor 550 like at 1080p? And (real world) compatibility with XP?
A Celeron will happily decode MPEG2 at 1080p. Or it will with some help from a capable GPU. If you want to watch heavily compressed H.264, forget it. Not even 720p.
My dual-core 2.2GHz Dell M1730 can play 1080p Matroska packaged H.264, *until* it gets to very complex scenes. This is with me using not-so-intuitive (and one not-so-free) software products to bring as much efficiency as possible to the process.
Hi Def can be a costly business.
and the missus will really appreciate the wooden sleeve look, but a bit of a pisser that it's only available with Vista.
Not wildly cheap once you start adding in all the options to get it to a decent machine either.
Still, good to see the majors starting to produce smaller kit like this
Very nice! Would be even better if they offered a solid state drive. OCZ have a brand new 64GB drive that reads at 120GB/sec. Low power, blisteringly fast, and deadly silent.
I'd prefer a "no-OS" or an "XP" option rather than Phista.
Oh, and a quad core option would be good too, but I guess they'll add that in the future. It looks like a better deal than a Shuttle.
Now, can they do the same trick with their servers? I'd like a server that uses 70% less power please. With a Ruby Red case. ;-) Paris 'cos she's like one of these too.
the march to lower power consumption continues..
most people don't need much more than this anyway..
quite bizarre retailers punting out these quad cores for machines that don't really run much software that can use it..it's just a waste of power! (i.e. "redundant power")
dell always seem to know where the button is, even if they don't hit it every single time..they hit it more than most, imo.
like the baby laptop:
http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2008/05/29/dell_mini_inspiron/
cheers,
bill
checkout:
http://www.eupeople.net/forum
Microsoft have banned them from selling it with XP.
As such, since I'd rather let Michael Jackson adopt my children, Harriet Harman educate my boys, or Gordon Brown ru(i)n the economy, than use it, I'm not going to buy one. I think the phrase from Good Morning Viet Nam says it best. "Vista sucks the sweat off a dead man's balls."
(Except I wasn't going to buy one anyway, I was going to buy 4 - study, living room, kitchen, and bedroom - if the first one was quiet - like silent quiet.)
Its on the front page of Dell UK now. I, like many will only use XP. I suggest everyone who thinks the same could go onto their online sales chat and ask if its available with XP, or you won't buy one. Its a nice looking little box and I would seriously consider it for a new PC I need to buy shortly. but Vista sucks.
If you just wanted a cheap unit to watch HD movies on, then, and I hate to say this being a PC fan through and through, wouldn't a PS3 be cheaper and more reliable? Sod the games aspect, as a media streaming front end, with Blu-Ray support, you can't do better for the money really.
Flame on I guess, but it isn't meant to be flame bait, I promise.
Screwdriver? For that I think a butter knife to get past the 'sealed' chassis would be far more productive.
Or the 'old' kitchen knife that only gets used on non-food items [everyone owns one] which has helped me get into many a 'non-user servicable' item.
"Sealed unit" to me reads as "challenge".
Anyway, Vista? No. I think I'll stick around for the EeeBox meself...
Steven R
>>>Very nice! Would be even better if they offered a solid state drive. OCZ have a brand new 64GB drive that reads at 120GB/sec. Low power, blisteringly fast, and deadly silent.
Actually, in a comparison against a notebook HDD, SSD's perform WORSE on the power consumption scale. This is because SSDs don't have an idle power-down mode, so they run at full power all the time, whereas most of the energy an HDD consumes is from spinning up the disk initially and moving the actuator arm for reads and writes. And HDDs not in use can be powered down to reduce consumption. Not so with today's SSDs.
More here: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ssd-hdd-battery,1955.html
I like these mini desktops, and if it came with XP I'd have one. How about its performance in hot weather? I had a PC with an AMD64 which gave up after a few weeks of 90+ degree temps here in California, and that was with lots of active cooling. Will this one give up when the temperature rises?
Raises hand to ask question. I don't get it. If they can do a laptop for £299 with a screen and battery included, why is this thing £100 more? I can see a big market for these mini desktops now every man and his uncle has a 42"+ monitor sat in their lounge, but not at more than £150-200. After all, anyone wanting a full blown media centre will buy/build the beast. These little tiddlers are just right for a casual bit of surfing with your TV dinner on your lap, but currently too expensive for such infrequent use.
MacMini does all this in a prettier package and has been doing so since the middle ages. Pimping the case won't make the dell match anyone's living room. It'll just clash like a golfer's jacket unless you've had all your furniture made out of shiny plastic.
And @whoever mentioned 5400 only, my laptop's running on a 7200rpm hitachi in a 2.5" form factor so it could easily be an upgrade.
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