Desktops

New Mac mini gets unibody shell, gaming graphics

There's a new Mac mini and it's thinner, lighter and more powerful than ever, Apple says. The latest iteration of the iconic miniature PC will feature an aluminium enclosure and is constructed using the 'unibody' manufacturing process originally developed for the MacBook Pro.

It'll have a bigger footprint than its predecessor (197mm by 197mm versus 165mm by 165mm) but it's significantly thinner -- just 36mm compared to the older model's 51mm. This has allowed Apple to integrate the power supply inside the chassis, reducing overall system volume by 20 percent.
Continue reading...

Post a comment

Sony Vaio J series: 21-inch hi-def all in one PC range kicks off with J11M1E/B

Tired of having a separate monitor and PC cluttering up your workspace? Could be you need an all in one PC, like the new Sony Vaio J11M1E/B, the first in the new Vaio J series of 21-inch high-definition monoputers.

The J range displays full hi-def video at 1080p resolution. They sport a 21.5-inch Vaio Display Plus touchscreen, throbbing with Windows 7 Home Premium multitouch for poking, swiping and pinching on the screen. Continue reading...

Post a comment

Acer Revo range: RevoView, RevoPad, RevoCenter, revamp

Acer has unveiled the Revo range, a selection of home entertainment storage and playback devices. The range consists of the Revo multimedia center, the RevoView media player and RevoCenter home storage jobby. Continue reading...

Post a comment

A-EON kicks it old skool with AmigaOne X1000

Remember Amiga? Congratulations, you're old. Anyway, it's back -- a company known as A-EON has snapped up the AmigaOne trademark and slapped it on a new computer known as the AmigaOne X1000. Alright granddad, settle down, before you do yourself a mischief.

Billed as a 25th anniversary upgrade to the original Amiga 1000, the AmigaOne X1000 is a desktop PC with specifications that greatly exceed those its dusty old predecessor. Inside, it's packing a 1.8GHz dual-core PPC RISC CPU, 2GB of RAM, ATI R700 graphics, a 500GB hard drive, a DVD drive and an audio chip capable of 7.1-channel audio. Alright, so it clearly won't worry an Alienware rig, but it's better than a kick in the dentures. Continue reading...

2 comments

Windows Phone 7 cross-platform gaming with Xbox 360 and PC demoed

Crikey, that was fast. Microsoft, not usually a company to move quickly, has shown off its new cross-platform gaming tech, just a few weeks after getting us all excited about the idea at Mobile World Congress. The software behemoth is aiming to explode the mobile gaming market by introducing games that span Windows 7 Phones, the Xbox 360 and Windows 7 PCs.

Microsoft's senior vice president of technical strategy, Eric Rudder, demonstrated a working version of the technology at the company's Tech·Ed Middle East conference in Dubai, Trusted Reviews reports. Rudder presented a simple platforming game running on three Microsoft platforms -- a prototype Asus Windows Phone 7 Series mobile, an Xbox 360 and a Windows 7 PC. The game, developed on Microsoft's Visual Studio software, presented a virtually identical experience on each platform, adapting to the different control inputs. Continue reading...

Post a comment

Acer Predator G7750: Demon gaming PC makes trophies of men

The CIA has us pushing too many pencils, so when Acer dropped us into a meatgrinder with a host of announcements at this year's CeBIT, we didn't have time to bleed, let alone get to tha' choppa.

Meet the Predator G7750, Acer's latest foray into the hardcore gaming world. Looking appropriately hideous, this performance-boosting monster boasts an Intel Core i7 processor, which features TurboBoost technology to dynamically accelerate system performance, and hyper-threading to apparently enable the G7750 to handle eight processing threads on four cores. Continue reading...

Post a comment

HP TouchSmart 300-1115uk and 600-1040uk early review: Multi-touch sensitive PCs

Touchscreens are well and truly part of our daily lives, from ticket machines to smart phones, but they've yet to find a place in our homes. The HP TouchSmart 300-1115 and 600-1040 are part of the latest generation of touchscreen all-in-one PCs shown to us by PC World at a recent showcase event. We like the idea of swooshing, swiping and poking our computers, so we gave them a go and tried to think how we'd use them in everyday life. Continue reading...

Post a comment

MSI 3D all-in-one is first 3D HD desktop PC

MSI is showing off the first of the current generation of 3D PCs, an all-in-one model with Blu-ray and three-dimensional high definition.

The 24-inch PC boasts a 120Hz LED panel and comes with 3D active-shutter glasses. It plays 1080p HD content. MSI is keeping the rest of the specs under wraps, but did tell Crave the all-in-one is based on the Intel Core i3/i5 CPU platform with ATI HD 5730 graphics. Continue reading...

Post a comment

Office 2010 FAQ: Pricing, Starter edition and more

Microsoft has announced official UK pricing for Office 2010. The bad news is that -- Microsoft being Microsoft -- there's a hatful of different versions, all at different price points, to twist your melon into complex, painful shapes. The good news, however, is that Crave has crawled on its belly through the minefield of options to answer the most common questions about the new software, and to help you choose the right version. Continue reading...

2 comments

MSI Wind Top AE2220 Hi-Fi: HD touchscreen gaming boombox

MSI is best known for its range of netbooks and components, but the bafflingly named Wind Top AE2220 Hi-Fi all-in-one PC is a full-on computing machine, with a focus on... everything.

Starting with the audio, the 'Hi-Fi' moniker owes to the full-range 5W hi-fi speakers mounted just under the screen. While you'll struggle to hoist this beast on to your shoulder for some ghetto-blasting action, it might just cater to your desk's acoustic needs, though we suspect it's unlikely to satisfy audiophiles. Continue reading...

Post a comment

Intel Atom N450 chip: Modelled by lady

While we were at CES, we stumbled across a lady on the Intel booth with the eeny-weeny new Atom N450 chip stuck to her chest. So we took pictures of it -- the chip, that is.

She didn't seem too keen on our cameras, but when we fed her some line about these chips -- codenamed 'Pineview' -- replacing the current 'Diamondville' Atom N270 as the mainstay for next-gen netbooks, and that you lot would be interested in reading about them, she caved in. Sucker. Continue reading...

Post a comment

CES 2010

All our CES 2010 news, hands-on photos and videos on one page. Expect to see a bunch of 3D TVs, netbooks and Android phones galore, along with cameras with more megapixels than you'd ever need and a host of other surprises.

Dell Inspiron One 19: Its budget will budge it

Who said a 19-inch, all-in-one desktop PC has to cost more than £500? Dell has just announced a fully touchscreen Windows 7 iMac alternative that costs less than half a grand, and while it might not pack the power of its competitors, it's got more than enough for day to day use.

The Dell Inspiron One 19 is, if we're honest, a budget option. But for daily Web browsing, photo viewing, email sending and Facebooking, we have no reason to criticise its entry-level specifications. And its 19-inch touchscreen allows for some finger-friendly navigation you don't get on many higher-end machines. Continue reading...

Post a comment

Advent Centurion, Firefly and Verona: Stocking thrillers

On the -29th day of Christmas, Advent gave to we, a laptop and two ultra-cheap PCs. Sorry, that neither rhymes nor makes sense, but it is true: the high-street retailer's just unveiled the Centurion gaming desktop, the Firefly budget home PC, and the lightweight Verona laptop.

The Verona, according to Advent, is designed with mobility in mind. It's the proud owner of a 13-inch display, 2GB of RAM, a 250GB hard drive and a copy of Windows 7 Home Premium. If we were in its shoes, we'd be rather less proud of the anaemic Intel Celeron 743 processor. It's the Usain Bolt of laptop processors -- if Usain Bolt gained 15 stone and a bad case of gout. Continue reading...

1 comment

Dell Inspiron Zino HD: Blu-ray media centre for £600

A Blu-ray-playing Windows 7 media centre with a terabyte of storage and a dedicated graphics processor for £600? Not too shabby, huh? Such a system is Dell's new Inspiron Zino HD set-top PC, and it's worth more than one of your glances.

Basically, it's one of those doesn't-have-a-monitor setups, like the Asus Eee Box or the equally Blu-ray packing ViewSonic VOT550 we saw a couple of months back. The idea is you'll hook it up to an HDTV via HDMI and use a little wireless keyboard and mouse to access all your content. Continue reading...

Post a comment

Intel settles with AMD for $1.25bn

Rival chip manufacturers Intel and AMD have settled their bitter legal disputes in a massive $1.25bn deal, our sister site ZDNet UK reports. Intel was accused of trying to shut AMD out of the market and was hit with a 1bn fine from the EU earlier this year. The companies will also share patent rights for the next five years. Continue reading...

Post a comment

The 20 most extreme case mods of all time

Before laptops, World War II and dinosaurs, desktop PCs ruled the Earth. And they were dull. And they were beige. And nobody liked them.

Unsurprisingly, many users attempted to modify their desktop PCs in increasingly extreme ways. Some added stickers, others added flashing lights, while some -- jobless students, mostly -- pimped their rigs until they were utterly unrecognisable as PCs.

Today, we pay homage to those men and women of the modding scene by presenting to you the 20 most pimped-out case transmogfications ever conceived. Continue reading...

Post a comment

Snow Leopard vs Windows 7: How the Apple has fallen

Apple's products are universally acclaimed for their wonderfulness and gorgeousness -- except in the real world, where people use computers for actual work and not just for messing around.

Just ask The Onion, and when you're done, have a butchers' at the latest market-share statistics. Apple's Leopard operating system failed to make significant in-roads against even an ailing Windows Vista, and we're not so sure Snow Leopard, despite its claimed improvements, has what it takes to topple Windows 7.

6 comments

Video: Alienware Area-51 ALX hands-on

No one would call Rory a small man, but even he's dwarfed by the monstrous Alienware Area-51 ALX desktop gaming PC. It truly is the mothership -- the fastest PC we've ever seen.

It's impossible not to be in awe of the Area-51's ludicrous chassis. With enormous vents on the top that lift up when its silicon heart starts pumping, and customisable lights everywhere (even inside), it makes a massive statement. And that statement is: I am geek, hear me roar. Or as Rory says, "Don't f*** with me."
Continue reading...

1 comment

'Get a Mac' ads heckle Windows 7 launch

Apple has released three new 'Get a Mac' adverts, all designed to upset the launch of Windows 7.

In one spot, 'Broken Promises', the nincompoop PC character, played by John Hodgman, wants to celebrate the "good news" that the newly released Windows 7 won't have the problems of its previous operating systems. The ever-smug Mac character (Justin Long) retorts by saying PC has made the same promises every time it's launched a new OS, triggering a smart-aleck retro montage.

Post a comment