El Reg takes a look at ten desktop computers, from Apple’s Mac Pro to Dell’s exotic XPS M2010. The verdict: “The ten PCs we have looked at here represent a huge cross-section of the computer market and as such offer varied functionality depending on specific needs and budgets. If you’re looking for an imposing combo of power and potent design then the Alienware really should be your first and only port of call. For us, if money were no object we’d opt for the Dell XPS for its sheer bling factor, but in the real world give us an Apple Mac Pro and we’re happy.”
Excellent Article, lots of variety!
The MacMini looks pretty lacking now; hopefully it’ll be updated in a few days time
I like my Mini there bucko! It’s minimalistic – just the way a computer should be. Maybe they will bring back the Cube design with Mini internals.
For us, if money were no object we’d opt for the Dell XPS for its sheer bling factor
I would think that anyone who would be overly concerned with bling factor on their computers are probably the same nimrods who would ride around with these:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eM8sA-zN4zw
Thanks, to Generation iPod, it’s like everything has to come out in at least 8 different colors these days.
Edited 2007-06-09 00:08
Aaaah! The car is a Cylon!
… Well, at least I don’t mind lack of color choices, as long as the one that’s left isn’t garish.
Yes, because choice is a bad thing and before “Generation iPod” came out we all wore grey clothes, slept in grey sheets, ate grey breakfasts, drove grey cars, worked in grey buildings, mowed grey lawns, admired grey skies, and spoke in grey tongues…
Sorry, we don’t all live in Manchester…
Not really a response, more of a sidecar. Sorry.
I recently fell upon a video of some guy at some “brainiac” conference touting his book about the negative aspects of choice. he pretty much said that excessive choice allows you to be dissatisfied even with a good solution just because you didn’t choose another good solution. It was all rather amusing and the guy was a decent enough speaker, but his attempts to frame choice as a negative aspect fell a tad flat, considering he was trying to influence others to choose his book from the flurry of other books there.
Example: I recently bought a “whitebox” PC on eBay. There were a dizzying array of choices, but once I hammered out what I wanted, I was able to get it exactly as I wished. Just think if I had had two equally lousy (or good), yet vastly different choices. The choice would have been crucial and dissatisfying simultaneously.
In other words: a lime green iPod plays the same music an arctic blue one does, so choose a color and know that it wasn’t all that important a choice.
omg, that was the most horrid thing ive watched all day.
In all fairness, those rims are slightly more interesting than the wide array of LED and acrylic junk we see for PCs these days. Even the most practical high-end enclosures insist on the ultra-bright blue LED thing. Most everything the enclosure vendors and OEMs push for high-end consumers actually makes the system less effective, from aluminum to transparent fans.
The high-end desktop market is all about form factors and efficient cooling, but this roundup doesn’t really go there. Anyone can put two 8800GTX cards in an ugly mid-tower enclosure and charge $3000. I’d rather buy a system with an innovative cooling design. Actually, the Dell XPS 720 H2C is pretty interesting for uber-gamers. Definitely more interesting than the 20-pound “luggable” or the deafening Alienware monstrosity.
Hey that’s actually pretty cool! I wanted to invent a messaging system that was placed on your rear window that could send messages to people behind you. But I was too lazy to go about inventing it.
If they’re looking at *desktops* then it would have made more sense to include iMac instead of the Mini. That way they could compare it to that oversized Dell from outer space.
I totally agree, given the scope of the article, that leaving out the iMac and including the mini instead was a bad idea. The iMac is Apple’s consumer desktop in the true sense of the term.
Yeah, but the iMac falls into the category of “all-in-one” computers, which has its own set of competitors in the non-Mac market. This article focused explicitly on “headless” PCs.
I have a 350 Mhz PowerMac G4,
it runs the newest OS 10.4.9 and I can work with Photoshop CS2 and Cinema 4D R9 in a aceptable speed.
I love my mac.
I envy your patience. I use a MacBook Pro and I often get frustrated because some things just take too long…like Finder showing what’s in a folder.
not enough ram?
“I can work with Photoshop CS2 and Cinema 4D R9 in a aceptable speed.”
We must have a COMPLETELY different definition of “acceptable speed”.
When will people start to write objective articles.
And ending like this ‘but in the real world give us an Apple Mac Pro and we’re happy.”‘ really suck.
Because it is a lie for a lot of people.
We are used to Windows at work, we have had Windows for years at home. A lot of people have Windows specific software, build for .Net.
Yes you could dual boot, or run parallel, but then why not use a machine made for Windows ?
I have tried OSX, and yes it was sort of okay to work with, but in the long run it really annoyed me, and i did miss a lot of software i have on Windows.
So for me the OSX is totally useless. When i want to play a game, same problem the amount of Mac games is very tiny compared to windows.
I still have not seen just a single feature on OSX that want’s me to switch, it is vendor lock in hugely compared even to Microsoft.
No thanks, i prefer my Windows XP laptop, and Windows Vista workstation. Where i can use all my programs and the few games i have without having to dual boot (and have to pay for 2 licenses) or using parallels.
A Mac might be good for some people, but the way the article ends, show everybody that the objectivity is gone.
Edited 2007-06-09 15:50
But then again, a lot of people don’t have Windows specific software.
Unless you’re talking about specific point of sales software, or some obscure accounting application, there are Mac version of most commercial software from Adobe, MS, etc. Or there are alternatives on the Mac that are developed by smaller software houses.
You mean like ACT or Simply Accounting?
Except it’s not a lie, it’s an opinion. A lie would be if they misrepresented some of the features or performances of the various machines. As far as I can tell they did not, they simply stated that they would like a MacPro.
“When i want to play a game, same problem the amount of Mac games is very tiny compared to windows.”
At the same prise of a gaming PC you can buy a MacBook and a console: you can have a cool and useful portable computer that you can use everywhere you want and a powerful, multimedial, versatile, simple and smart gaming machine than every PC o Mac in the universe, and you havn’t to update it every six months to play a brand new game.
When will people understand that PCs or Macs are not for gaming and ALL overpriced for it?
Not all PC games are available for consoles, and among those that are, some simply play better on a PC. Civ IV and Europa Universalis 3 for example aren’t available for any console, and if they where they would probably suck (I know Civ IV is now available for the mac, but it took a long time and non of the expansions are available). I’m not even going to touch the whole FPS console vs mouse debate.
Anyway, you can’t say a word about the overpricing of PC as gaming machine. And not all PC games are availabe for all gaming PCs: you need to update almost anything everytime; with a console not.
Now I’m far from the hugest PC gamer around, but I just don’t find the whole upgrade thing a problem at all. I bought my current computer almost three years ago, and it wasn’t the fastest computer money could buy back then. The only upgrades I’ve made have been an extra gig of RAM, which I got for reasons other than games, and a new graphics card that cost me $160 (which also improved the performance of Maya, so it wasn’t purely a game thing). And I’ve yet to find a game I cannot run on this machine. Sure I can’t turn all the shiny graphics up to max on some of the latest games, but that’s never stopped me from enjoying the games.
The whole line about needing a new $500 graphics card every 6 month to play the latest games just isn’t true.
You have to remember that not everyone needs to use windows software. Gaming isn’t the end all be all of the pc world. Running Windows on a MacPro is just as trivial as running it on a Dell. They have an opinion stating that they would be just as happy running a macpro as they would using an Alienware or a Dell. All you seemed to focus on was the fact that they said that they would be just as happy running a macpro. I’m not one to call people fanboys but I think your comment is stretching it. The macpro is expandable with up to 16GB of Ram and 3TB of disk space as well as the ability to run 4 Video cards if desired. If you install windows using bootcamp then you will have a more than decent gaming rig and if you stick with MacOSX you have a pretty hefty media powerhouse that any professional be it 3d artist, Magazine publisher, or Music producer would be more than happy to run. That would make anyone happy. Though some people like to complain just for the sake of it.
There is more to using a computer than playing (IMHO silly shootem up etc) games.
The % of people (ie gamers) whose majority use of a computer is playing games in very small indeed.
Most PC Users want to do other things with their lives.
I used to play PC Games at every opportunity. I was pretty well addicted to a few games (about 10 years ago) Then, I had a spell in Hospital and I never returned to game playing. Now I see lots of my friends spending hours and hours a week addicted to their favourite game.
I now have other things that are far more important in my life.
Who’s holding a gun to your head saying that you have to run MacOS on a Mac Pro? No need to dual-boot. If you’re a Microsoft addict, then just run Vista or XP. Windows runs just as… good enough on an Intel Mac as it does on any other PC.
Will it make good use of 8 cores? Probably not quite as well as MacOSX, but honestly, there isn’t a desktop platform that scales well past 2 cores. If you want a dual-socket Intel workstation, you’re not going to do any better than the Mac Pro, no matter what OS you choose. That’s the objective conclusion.
Give me one good reason why i should waste money on an OS i do not like, i have tried OSX for a few month, and i still think it i bad for productivity.
There is no framework like .Net, there is no games (for the 2 times a month i wanna play)…
I prefer to have an open machine, i can configure even with the most exotic hardware i can find.
Many people think Microsoft gives you vendor lockin, but they are the nicest people compared to what Apple does, with their OS, their MP3 Players, their music shop and so on.
When i had to get a new MP3 player, because my iPod fell on the floor and the harddrive died, i did read a lot of test. And in many test the Creatice Zen Vision M, won on functionality, usability, video quality, sound quality. So in EVERY aspect it was better than the ipod, but why did the test put ipod on first spot, because ‘the Vision M is not an iPod’ It just show how little objectivity the testing business has. They just let the Apple hardware win, no matter how crappy it really is compared to other products on the market, that really sucks !
That is another reason why i will not support a company who locks in their customers that hard as Apple does.
If i buy music in the iTunes shop, i am forced to either recode (makes the sound quality crappy) or buy an iPod. If i buy in mostly other show and get it in WMV i have a huge choice of players capable of playing the music, not only one companies, that is treating the customer with respect, compared to what Apple does.
p.s. When i soon am going to buy a new machine, it is going to be one with the Intel Quad core, with hardware selected by me, and not the tiny amount one campany forces me to use. I want flexibility not lockin.
heh, i just thought it was funny you mention that it’s bad for productivity and that is has a lack of games in the first two sentences..
First of all you are paying a an OS tax regardless of what platform you use. Up until recently getting amachine from Dell without the windows “tax” was pretty damn near impossible.
Second, no one is forcing you to use Itunes, there are other alternatives that might suit your needs better. Itunes is made for the ipod, its as simple as that. Its a package. You are not going to buy an online game for an xbox and expect it to run on a PS3.
Third the macpro is using pro level, workstation class hardware. Yeah you can get yourself an Intel core 2 quad, but how expandable is the ram on that? Can you use 4 video cards on that (it’s my understanding that mobo’s that do this are few and far between), how much disk space can you get for that (though this isn’t really an issue nowadays)? You have to think about the whole package not about your bias against apple, and there is clearly a bias.
Yes, creative has an incredible mp3 player that is arguably better than an ipod. They support more formats, and I think have a higher video resolution, but the ipod is a brand, its a product that almost everyone world wide knows and can identify just by looking at it. Is it fair that there is a bias from reviewers towards it, no, but it is still a pretty damn good product which I’m happy to own and has not given me any issues since I got it. Then again I’m not one to go ahead and drop $400 worth of equipment on the floor. Besides that Apple gives you a one year warranty and 3 years if you get the applecare package. Its really not all that much if with an ipod, though it gets more expensive with their other equipment.
“There is no framework like .Net”
Mac OS X is all about frameworks and SDKs. They just aren’t called “.Net”. I would submit that NEXTSTEP introduced well laid out development frameworks. Alright, maybe they didn’t introduce them, but you know what I mean.
‘but in the real world give us an Apple Mac Pro and we’re happy.’
I think that’s a pretty objective fact. It may not make you happy, but unless you want to tell them that they can’t be happy with a Mac Pro, it’s an objective fact.
But since we’re arguing, the Mac Pro is an amazing system, especially a souped up one. Two quad-core Xeon 3.0GHz processors, up to 3TB of storage, up to 16GB of RAM, four graphics cards…
Ability to run OS X if you’re into video editing, photography and using lots of Mac-specific stuff. Ability to use Windows if you like gaming, .NET programs, and Windows specific stuff. I really don’t think this machine is targetted at those who just do a bit of office accounting.
And to say that the Macs don’t run Windows well is a complete lie. My one never crashes running Windows, and it runs it a damn sight better than most of my friend’s Windows specific laptops. Hardware quality most likely, but I run my MBP in Windows to play games and haven’t had a problem.
I usually run OS X because it just feels nicer, but if you don’t like it, fair enough, but if you wouldn’t be happy with a Mac Pro and assume that nobody would means that you must be extremely picky. What computer do you have that’s so amazing? I think objectively, the hardware on a Mac Pro *is* good.
When I had a look at the article, I found it quite strange that it actually does contain tower-like hardware containers on the first page. Maybe they are mini towers or midi towers? But definitely no desktops. Desktops (per semantic definition) first appear on page two. The strange Dell thing on page 3 is… hmmm… yes, what could it be? Then, towers on pages 4 and 5, too.
From what I know, a desktop computer is to be characterized as a device, in form similar to a video tape recorder, that you put on the top of your desk, and, if possible, put the monitor on top. Well, this might be a bit complicated with the Apple Mac Mini, but finally, it’s usual to put it onto the table.
The tower like devices usually do not reside on the top of the desk, they sit beneath it. This is a very usual solution, primarily because of the noise these devices tend to produce.
Maybe the main definition of “desktop” (as a form factor) does not apply here, but when people do talk about desktop computers, I’m a bit confused if they show mini tower computers.
On the other hand, we put out SGI Octanes and Tezros onto the table, too, because they looked good – years before the “generation iPod” started to exist. 🙂
It’s like stating that laptops are meant to be used on top of your lap, and still majority of them are placed on the top of the desk.
Desktops computers are called desktop because computers of that class were first ones designed which were small enough to be used as common desktop inventory. Majority of old computers were just too big to be taken as part of desktop. And indeed the first ones were of form factor as you describe which over time evaluated to average ATX tower.
Edited 2007-06-09 22:10
“It’s like stating that laptops are meant to be used on top of your lap, and still majority of them are placed on the top of the desk.
“
Uh, no. As far as I know, the term “Laptop” refers to a notebook type computer built by Toshiba, such as the WalkMan and DiscMan are a product built by Sony, while everything else similar is a portable MC / CD player.
People using laptops on top of their legs usually get register int boiled_eggs; 🙂
“Desktops computers are called desktop because computers of that class were first ones designed which were small enough to be used as common desktop inventory. Majority of old computers were just too big to be taken as part of desktop. And indeed the first ones were of form factor as you describe which over time evaluated to average ATX tower.”
So “Desktop” refers to a certain class of computers that exist inside a range of specifications (form factor, performance, field of usage, and, surely, price).
You could even call Sun Sparc and Ultra computers, along with SGI Indy or Indigo to be called desktop computers, allthough the usual term for these would be “Workstation” (which usually refers to computers that are not PCs – PCs are x86 / x86-64) – and they have been invented more than 10 years ago…
Thanks for discussing semantics. 🙂
The big advantage for Apple is that you can run “most” OSs on it including Mac OS X. Most people can run OS X on PCs (there have been some people that got it working but this is not for average people.)
As a computer consultant, I always do my best to “help” my clients to help themselves.
90% or so of my clients, I really push them to move to Mac once their PCs are no longer economically sensible. I risk losing work by recommending my clients to switch to Macs, because in honesty, Windows is what generates income for me. Macs by far break down much much less, it is usually operator error that I have to content with rather than missing DLLs or Virus or Malware, or that the Windows machines for some reason decided to stop printing or networking with each other. These sorta problems simply does not occur on the Mac side, even if they are mixed with Windows network.
Yes, I’ll me losing amount of work, but I end up freeing more time to take on more work, in the end it is win-win situation.
So far, out switching hundreds of Windows users to Macs, no one has gone back to Windows. Only “complaint” I usually get is for about 1-2 weeks after switching; that they are confused. But after 2 weeks, they are quickly the experts.
So in the end, by switching to Macs my clients save money and headache.
Edited 2007-06-10 17:27