NEWS: Five touchscreen Windows 7 PCs to look out for

Dan Sung — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 15:40:18 +0100

The age of the multimedia all-in-one

The launch of Microsoft Windows 7 sees the first raft of touchscreen PCs come to market and the place they're coming fastest of all is in the all-in-one desktop space. It's easy to spend a lot on what are sometimes items of design and luxury rather than machines of multi-touch multimedia, so to help sort the sheep from the goats, here's five Windows 7-toting winners to look out for.

HP Touch Smart

Price: ?900
Screen size: 20"
CPU: AMD processor
RAM: 4GB
Graphics: ATI Radeon
Storage: 500GB

HP has announced two new models of its HP TouchSmart all-in-one PC but while the higher end 600 comes with a 23-inch screen, it's the more modest 300 unit where you'll find the value. Both variants run version 3.0 of HP's TouchSmart software. Its highlights include the TouchSmart Canvas, which will let you organise and edit photos by touch, and TouchSmart Live TV which gives you the sort of functions you'd expect from a PVR, with the ability to pause live TV and record from the EPG. There's no Blu-ray drive with the 300 but there's still Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and a wireless keyboard and mouse. Naturally, it's HDMI port happy for all the Xboxes, PS3s and whatever other kinds of AV devices you want to add in. At ?900 it's well within the range of a normal person having a bit of a splurge.

Asus Eee Top ET2203

Price: ?820
Screen size: 21.6"
CPU: 2.2GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
RAM: 4GB
Graphics: ATI Radeon 4570
Storage: 500GB

The ET2203 is not the first time Asus has gone touchscreen with plenty of experience already in the stylish Eee Top range. This time, the company has launched a unit to go with Windows 7 and while cheaper than the HP model, it still manages to have a bigger screen and BD player to boot. It has HDMI-in ports, b/g/n wireless and an SRS sound card with two 3W speakers. There's also a webcam and wireless keyboard and mouse. What's missing here is the TV tuner functionality which might well be central to the positioning of machines like this but, if that's not a function you're after, then the Asus is a very good choice.

Dell Studio One 19

Price: ?799
Screen size: 19"
CPU: 2.93GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
RAM: 3GB
Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce 9400
Storage: 500GB

Aimed at the family's living room, or even kitchen, the Studio One 19 is made of aluminium, glass and fabric and comes in white, blue and grey. It's the cheapest of the lot, but only just, and it's actually been on the scene for a little while now. It does well in the graphics department and has a pacey CPU but there's no optional extras at that price in the shape of a Blu-ray drive and webcam. It also has the smallest screen and someone seems to have run off with a gig of memory too. It's hard to see why someone would opt for it ahead of either the HP or the Asus but expect to see a more competitive price to make you think a little longer in the weeks to come.

Sony Touch Vaio L Series PC/TV

Price: ?1,399
Screen size: 24-inch
CPU: 2.66GHz Intel Core 2 Quad
RAM: 4GB
Graphics: GeForce G210M 512MB
Storage: 1TB

So, that's the affordable ones out of the way. If you really want to treat yourself, then the recently announced 24-inch Sony Vaio L all-in-one would certainly be a most enjoyable way to go. It has a Full HD, WUXGA 1920 x 1080 widescreen panel with a built-in TV tuner a huge bank of storage and, of course, Sony's Blu-ray support as well. The quad core processor is a very welcome step up in performance and power and, being a Vaio, it also looks damn good too. It comes with Sony's media gallery software and despite all the luxury features, is still relatively good value.

Medion Touch

Price: ?2,000
Screen size: 24"
CPU: Intel CoreTM2 Quad Q9000
RAM: 4GB
Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce GT240M graphics card
Storage: 1TB

Surprisingly, it's Medion that has taken a slight leave of its senses by coming up with the most expensive of these Windows 7 all-in-ones. The 24-inch Touch X9613 is designed as a wall mounted unit to be used as an always connected secondary screen for the family home. On the surface it has a similar spec to the Vaio but it's packed with features including twin DVB-T/DVB-S tuners, a full Dolby Surround sound bar and HDMI-in and outputs. It's a technological statement from the company normally associated with budget PCs but it'd certainly be a fun statement to be a part of. It? features voice control, has a wireless mouse and keyboard and an RF remote. It also happens to look pretty swish too.

NEWS: Medion launches AKOYA E3211 laptop

Duncan Geere — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 17:04:49 +0100

13.3-inch screen with optical drive

Medion has announced a 13-inch notebook that comes packed with a ultra-low voltage processor, 16:9 HD display, and an integrated optical drive - something which is relatively rare on 13-inch machines.

Insides, along with the optical drive, there's a 1.3GHz Intel Pentium SU2700 ULV processor, an Intel 4500M graphics card, 4GB of memory, a 320GB hard disk, a 1.3-megapixel webcam and runs Windows Vista - but ships with a free upgrade to Windows 7.

There's also a memory card reader, b/g/n Wi-Fi, 3 USB ports, an expresscard slot, and all the audio ports you'd expect. It weighs 1.7kg including the battery, and that battery should hold out for 4 hours, if you believe Medion's claims.

It's available now from medionship.co.uk and costs ?500, including VAT.

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