MSI Wind Top AE1900

MSI's Cheap Desktop Suffers From Performance Anxiety

After
a few grim years ceded to the iMac, PC-based all-in-one desktops are
making an LL Cool J-esque comeback. Their next move: Make the switch
from semi-luxe gear designed for highly-aesthetic environments to the
mega-cheap world that the netbook has built.

MSI, creators of the popular Wind netbook line, actually has its
toes in both worlds with the Wind Top AE1900, which combines a somewhat
Mac-like, white-and-clear design with an ultra-cheap $589 price tag.

Specs look exceedingly promising at first: 250GB of hard drive
space, 2GB of RAM, integrated Wi-Fi, DVD burner, an SD card slot, and a
very bright 19-inch touchscreen display. If nothing else, it's one of
the best-looking touchscreens (non-capacitive; a stylus works better
than your finger) we've seen at this screen size. Windows Vista Basic
is preinstalled, and MSI also tosses a finger-friendly
program-launching skin on top of that. (It's easy to get from the skin
to Vista and back.)

But the Achilles' heel of the Wind Top is its baffling choice of an
Atom 330 processor to power these guts. Although the dual-core 330 is
known as the "fast" version of the Atom (it draws 8 watts instead of
the 2.5 watts used by the netbook standard Atom N270 and has double the
L2 cache), it's still woefully inadequate for a computer this
ambitious. The Wind Top AE1900 struggles with just about any task you
throw at it, from starting up to launching anything more complex than
Notepad. Benchmarks are rock bottom -- on par with actual netbooks --
and those otherwise impressive specs make you long for something far
snappier.

Even in environments where performance isn't a concern -- a kid's
room or the kitchen, both spots where you might actually put the Wind
Top -- the lengthy lag times are going to get frustrating. I frequently
found myself tapping an app to open it, assuming I hadn't clicked quite
right, and clicking it again a few more times, only to have the same
application launch itself five times in a row over the next few
minutes. Now try to imagine how frustrating that would be when you're
trying to get Disney.com open for a screaming toddler.

Advice to MSI: Drop in the cheapest Core 2 Duo CPU in lieu of the
most expensive Atom here and you'll have yourselves a real winner.

WIRED Amazingly affordable and loaded to the gills.
Touchscreen makes this a perfect kiddie computer. Slim profile lets it
fit just about anywhere. Cuter than a box of puppies.

TIRED Performance problems dog the user at every
turn. Flashing blue hard-drive activity light is front and center,
terribly distracting and impossible to cover up. Bundled keyboard and
mouse are beyond cheap. Webcam aim can't be adjusted.

• 
  Style:
  
  All-in-one
  
• 
  RAM size:
  
  2GB and under
  
• 
  Hard Drive Size:
  
  200GB to 299GB
  
• Manufacturer: MSI
• 
  
  
  Price: $589 (as tested)
  
  

Credits: wired.com

Review: Alienware Area-51 X-58

Alienware Area-51 X-58

photo by alienware


$6,373

 • 
alienware.com

8 out of 10

Alienware's Benchmark Buster Lands Carrying An Otherworldly Price

For such a supposedly secret location, that Area 51 sure does turn out a lot of computers.

OK, let's be serious for a moment. Laughing in the face of this
"recession" business, Alienware's latest, the Area-51 X-58, starts at
$1,649 and quickly goes up from there once you start piling on the
features. The configuration we tested: A stunning $6,373.

The centerpiece here is the new Core i7, Intel's latest CPU. The
i7-965 Extreme installed here is the fastest and most-powerful chip
that Intel currently makes, with four cores operating at 3.2GHz.
Running the 64-bit version of Vista, Alienware has taken advantage of
the lack of the 32-bit 3-GB RAM cap and wedged 12 gigs of DDR3 RAM into
the rig.

The lascivious excess doesn't stop there: Two Radeon HD 4850 X2
cards are also installed — giving this computer a grand total of four
GPUs. It almost goes without saying that the machine would have four
hard drives in it, a variety of high-speed and high-capacity drives
that offer a total of 2.25 terabytes of storage space.

Cutting-edge tech like this doesn't come without some headaches.
Expect crashes and frustration as you delve deep into tweak menus if
you want to get all your apps to work, especially games, which can be
particularly crash-prone with a video setup like this. That said, when
you do get things up and running it'll blow the doors off your
benchmarks: The X-58 typically got about double the benchmark scores of
anything else I've tested, and four or five times the scores you'd
expect from a PC released 18 months ago.

But with performance comes price, and all of this once again brings
us around to two inevitable questions: Who spends more than six
thousand dollars on a computer? And when can we come over to your house
to play with your other toys?

WIRED Loaded with the absolute latest technology from
top to bottom. Infinite connectivity options include six USB, two
gigabit Ethernet, one eSATA, and one Firewire port ... and that's just
in the back. Includes a free hat.

TIRED Incredibly heavy and imposingly large. Only one
optical drive? At this price we'd expect more than a one-year warranty.
1200 watt power supply ensures the unit doubles as a space heater.

• Consoles:
  
  Gaming PCs
  
• Manufacturer: Alienware
• Price: $6,373 (as tested)
  
  

Release Date: November 21, 2008

source: wired.com