Modern Vespa

Oops... double post.

I don't think anyone yet has considered this is NOT a consumer PC, but a business PC with the potential for point of sale or small business use. In these scenarios, access to anything other than the keyboard, mouse and screen are not only unnecessary for the limited access user (someone not the admin) but actually desirable for the staff that have to install and maintain the unit. It's also a good design for security installations where the cpu can be contained in a box or against a cubbie in a wall out of sight like an information kiosk or internet cafe.

While the design is certainly ugly, its purpose driven for a purpose no one has mentioned.

The debate between Windows and OS-X is as old as the companies themselves. There are fanboys for both and will defend their favorite OS to the end regardless of what "facts" are compared so why bother. It's whatever works best for each user. There are no software companies in business today anxious to sell previous generation products so that's a non-argument presented by anyone who already doesn't like the company they're complaining about.

64 bit native vs 32 bit is a huge step forward, if you don't know why than you're not using apps or doing tasks that would immediately benefit from it. Gaming is the least of the reasons why 64 bit is leap forward from 32 bit. And high end video memory is on the video card with dedicated GPUs and memory and won't use any of the system memory.

Multi-core processors (used by both macs and pc's), 8/16/32GB ram pools and more, multi-terabyte drive arrays along with parallel processes drive throughput and bandwidth to levels not seen before at consumer prices.

Activities like multi-channel HD video, voice and touch/gesture recognition on gigabit+ networks across multitudes of users simply was not possible a few years ago. And advances in hardware allow for units like mac minis and dell studio hybrids with more horsepower and home theater capacity than the highest end WinXP Media Centers from 5 years ago.

The endless variety of Windows PCs that derive naturally from their open architecture allows for all of the above and much, much more. It also creates scenarios where accessories no longer work as the systems advance and accessory makers choose a business decision to not maintain forward compatibility for a device the new OS was not designed for. The closed architecture of the Apple line allows the user to have a well defined expectation of what their machines can or can't do. The limited variety of Mac products allows Apple to ship very highly polished units that are simply gorgeous, almost works of art, but your options are limited by design to maintain their high standards.

In the end, a PC is as personal to each user as the soap or shampoo he uses. He finds one he likes and stays with it because it's right for him. Any other soap or shampoo just isn't as good as what you already know and like.

Being a Mac man for over 10 years I can honestly say it's not about the hardware. As much as I adore some of these lovely PC designs it's the dreaded software that makes em crap lol...... Why make half a lovely PC when u can get a Mac that knows how to talk to it's software!!

A machine from the Jurassic park era "Building better Dinosaurs"
There´s a few of them still running out there.

First SGI I saw was the Indy in 1995-96. Blew the doors off my PowerMac in the speed stakes. I wanted one until I found out the price tag was more than a new car.

Now I have a fully loaded Indy, last of the line.
O2 workstation also maxed out.
The Octane workstations that was used for the early Radiohead videos.
I love booting the Octane, makes the house lights go dim for a few seconds.
At some point in the future I want a Tezro.

The heavy iron is cool and yet not practical to have around the house.

I have a couple 512K Macs and Mac Classics but not a 128K Mac, which I'd love to have in my "collection." Because the others don;t take up enough space in the closet and garage.

Those who complain about how pricey Macs are now should consider that in 1984, the first 128K Mac cost $2500. That 27" iMac is a bargain!

My first G3 PowerBook (Wallstreet) would have been $2500 + the ram upgrade of $700. Ouch!!! Sore pocket.

Mike did. And I agree with both of you. I'm a desktop support engineer and think this looks brilliant. Especially in environments with small desks.

my $349 dell refurb downloads porn just as fast on my work's T1 line as all the design nerd's Macs do.

T1 always the top choice for porn and warez. My old SGI´s can strip a T1 just as fast as a modern machine.

When I used to go to work we were told off for stripping Adobes back bone connection.

that's great considering that T1 technology was current about the same time as SGI's O2. today's download speeds are 10x faster or more so your SGI box makes a great host for an old school gen1 browser, or are you downloading with ftp? It's great that you have a 12 year old machine still running, it's a testament to the higher quality components SGI built them with in their time, but don't kid your self that's as good or better than any of today's entry level pc's or mac's. heck, the processor in my iphone is faster than the mips chip in your O2.

Actually, it was cube farm use I had in mind with my criticism, and I think all three of you are stoned.  The design imposes significant constraints while offering no advantage that can't be duplicated--or done better--with either a conventional small-form-factor machine (placed behind the monitor if you really want it that way) or a true all-in-one with all the hardware inside the monitor housing.  In particular, the added depth behind the monitor makes it ill-suited to environments with small desks (which are increasingly common).

Maybe the difference is that I'm looking at it from a user's perspective instead of an admin's?  I wouldn't dismiss the point of view too lightly.  In many places I've worked, the ignorance of (some) users is matched only by arrogance of (some) IT staffers.

I see your point about the over-engineering. Is it really deeper than a TFT with an SFF behind it? The base of the monitor normally means I can't get them quite as close together as I'd like. The best arrangement I've seen is the monitor being on an angle-poise-type mount with the SFFs arranged behind them vertically.

Is the monitor height adjustable in the pic? If not you could pretty much be guaranteed a line of hypochondriacs waving OHS referrals about.

I'm seeing some of your reasoning here now, but I still reckon these would go down pretty well at our place.

(btw, whether I'm stoned or not isn't under discussion here )

It's not a question of users view vs admin view, it's an understanding of the intended application for the specific industrial design. I don't completely disagree with the cube farm comments (pro or con), but I was thinking more of an information kiosk or medical/industrial/factory environment where unit security, durability and mobility are important to the business. If you actually look at the Dell site at all the images of the unit in the gallery, you'll see it's purposely designed to be a secure unit. All the cables are secured in the oversized monitor stand, only a single power cord and ethernet port are exposed. Cordless peripherals are not used because they call be removed/lost/stolen and batteries die. Hard wired devices are naturally tethered to the main unit and always work. As for mobility, I've seen in the emergency room at my local hospital the new thing is computers exactly like this mounted on rolling stands using secure wifi. In these types of environments, you can be sure all the peripherals are secured from non-admin use and the design meets the business need which is what computer manufacturers do. The ignorance and arrogance you perceive could be the frustration of those whose job it is to serve their ill informed customers.

The cpu itself is just over 9" square, smaller than most laptops. Used without the secure monitor stand you can put it anywhere you want with full access to everything it provides. You could even put it under the conventional monitor stand allowing easy access to the front peripherals.

If you think this form factor is a bad choice for the limited applications only you know so much about, then choose a different form factor. It's like complaining that a 1/2" ratchet handle is too big for a 1/4" drive socket. Duh! Use the right tool for the right application. The same applies to pc form factor choices. Choosing what's right for your situation doesn't make it right for everyone else.

That's true now, because of Physical Address Extensions. Before that update, the system would have shown 3.5GB total, with even less available.

Not much consumer software is written for 64-bit or multi-threading, but Pro apps like video compression and databases show huge performance gains.

From a personal perspective it has never been closer for an ease of use OS. I have beta tested Win7 since the beginning and also have a Mac in the house. I also work within the IT industry. Apple have been resting on their laurels recently, for anyone to say that apple don't release half baked, untested and rushed software, just look at snow leopard, even some of the "true apple fanboys" you know the ones that get up and cheer to every word Jobs says have reported bad issues with the new OS. Where almost everyone has found Windows 7 to be a breath of fresh air.

Apple have always had it easier as they built all the systems and software. It's built on a Unix kernal and compared to the new Visual studio tools I think you will find the OSX ones to be archaic in comparison. There is a reason why Microsoft have over 90% of the pc market and over that for the Server market. Apple design their products, microsoft do not. From a business perspective unless you are in the design industry I think you will find it virtually 100% Microsoft.

Don't get me wrong I love macs, and if people have the money I'm quite happy to recommend them, though with the release of Windows 7 that might not be so true in the future. My problem is we are living in a credit crunch where most people are finding the times tough. You can pick up a very good Dell,Gateway,Toshiba,HP etc etc for £250 upwards, for the same spec Apple you will be looking at least double if not triple. Apple make so much money and are doing so well because of the profit margins they have on the hardware, they boast this to the shareholders. They have over $30 billion sitting in the bank as liquid cash for investment, yet they are still overcharging for their computers etc. Once Apple were the anti Microsoft, the cool, people friendly company that cared, now they are worse than Microsoft and only have one thing on their minds...$$$$$

Anyway back to topic I can see what Dell were trying to do, I just don't think the design works.

Mmmmm... Sony.......

You know... I am really surprised that Apple has not come up with a touch screen iMac...
You would think with the ipod and all they would be the first one to it, but no..
HP and now Sony have beat Apple to it..

Apple didn't "invent" the MP3 player or GUI either. Apple does have several patents for touch-based technologies, so I think we'll be seeing something soon. There's the tablet, of course... Who knows what else? I think it'll show up in other portables before desktops.

My take is that if most users still need to use a keyboard and mouse for input, a touchscreen for a desktop is little more than a gimmick. For 3D, imaging and other specific applications it could be very useful, but there's already very-expensive hardware for those uses. That's why I need one of these.

Otherwise, you'll be going from keyboard and mouse to screen and back again. If not fully and thoughtfully implemented, it could result in some very un-Mac like interfaces and user behaviors.

To some degree, it's a matter of expectations. After Vista, Windows users have cause to treat Win7 like a breath of fresh air. They're used to getting crap, then new crap, then worse crap. From what I hear, Win7 isn't crap so users are jubilant.

OSX users have come to expect quite a bit from their upgrades. Snow Leopard is good, but not as dramatic a visible upgrade as Panther. Even Apple knows it's an intermediate step to the next stage for OSX. That's probably why it's priced at $30.

So: OSX users are jaded because they're used to getting good software and got a rather unexciting upgrade. Win7 users had gotten accustomed to a steady diet of bug cupcake so a slice of apple cupcake is like a gift from heaven. Er, make that banana cream cupcake. Whatever.

i work in IT, and i have used vista everyday from the day it came out.

i still don't get what's so bad about it. if you don't like the uac, you can turn it off in about 14 seconds. so your 6 year old printer won't work with it- a new one costs about $50. guess what, my dot matrix printer didn't work with windows 98 either.

i just got a mac, but it was primarily due to me hating ie and the pc constantly downloading windows updates. i could have turned the windows updates off in about 7 seconds, and i could have installed sfarai in about 3 minutes.

i bought a mac to see what the fuss is all about, and i really, really, really like it, but i still don't get the 'vista is crap' nonsense. i like the mac better, but vista is certainly not 'crap.' crap is 20,000 distros of linux, none of which can play an mp3 file or connect to a printer out of the box and all of which have bongo drums or some such nonsense tooling about.

meh.

IT to did my 15-20 years in IT. One of the major issues I saw with Mac in the workplace was its inability to network well. True, you could be up a very easy mac network with some very simple cables. It was fast enough and dead simple. If you wanted an Apple and a PC to share the same resources on the same network, it was a major problem. it was also hard to have centralized administration of both nor was security a big selling point for an AppleShare network.

I grew up Mac before PC were a big deal. The first computer I had access to at home was a Mac Plus. It was a very high end system with dual floopy drives, 4 Megs of RAM and a 30 Meg external SCSI drive with a 3 pass color scanner and a laser printer that would dim the neighborhood lights when it cycled on. I also used the Apple IIE and used a Lisa when it was the height of"portable" or "luggable" computers.

I really have to disagree with you there... so much of the science and government community is based on Unix and Linux. Linux is a dream for me, as, with some exceptions, it is entirely free. Development of not only the software you use, but the OS itself, is in your hands with a Linux distro if you want it to be. Linux operating systems are extremely secure, powerful, and light on the hardware in my experience. Ubuntu runs so much faster on my dualboot PCs than Win XP (which is a relatively light Windows OS). The fact that there are so many distros is just part of the beauty of the experience - there are featherweight linux distros you can run off of media smaller than a flashdrive. Much of the software is interchangeable between distros, or if you are a linux person to begin with you can modify the rest to work on your distro in the end.

As far as flash and mp3s and such... that's not an issue these days. You must be thinking linux as it was ages ago. Current distros of Ubuntu, Fedora, etc can have you watching youtube or listening to your music in no time at all. Through the handy package managers, you can download and install the vast majority of the software available to your distro directly from the internet with the click of a button (games, development tools, different graphic design programs, teaching aids, atlases, seriously, almost whatever you want can be installed through the package managers). Installing a printer works almost identically to Mac OS, by the way...

It's really not that scary for people who want an easy out of the box OS... honestly. My grandmother is using an Ubuntu machine we built for her. Some distros are less user-friendly than others, though.

All the research labs I have worked at, visited, or am affiliated with use linux distros as their primary OS for these reasons and more.

Visual Studio 2010 is in Beta now and will support parallel processing for C# and F#. I am getting very excited about this. When I get some time I am going to start digging into learning the classes for parallel processing.

Joe

It is perfect for some of my workplace environment.

I'm not an IT guy but we all have flat screen in corners on our desks and this is perfect solution for that.
The one problem with the all-in-ones is that you are limited in the specs of the machine, upgrade-ability etc.

Like "martys" said, the great thing about pc's is that if this one doesnt fit your needs, get a different one.

We have several different types of machines.
Low end: similar to this product for admin, accounting, etc.
Mid: Operational staff
High: IT team
Extra High end: (basically small servers) for traders etc. which use intensive apps.

Try running Bloomberg, Eze TC, Thomson IM, Wonda, CQG, Reuters Trader 8.5, Tradeweb and a host of other application on a mac. I can can go on but you need windows to run even 1 of these applications.

And typically the Macs are not robust enough.

all in all do what fits you best. I dont like being confined to 4 different form factors that apple provides.

I have one dell laptop, one macbook, one dell precision t5400, one dell optiplex.

My macbook is for cruising the internet, and managing my music on my couch at home as that's all it's really good for

EDIT: the only computer that doesn't work with my small HP laserjet is my mac

that's the problem, i don't want to take something out of the box and then mess around with packet managers. i want to take os x or win 7 out of the box and have it work.

i had a dell mini 9 with ubuntu on it, and i spent 50% of the time using packet managers to download this or that to make sites or content work. i don't have to do that with my macbook or gateway.

i don't find it scary, i find it a waste of time and a pain in the ass.

it's good for servers and such, and that's what i use it for, but i personally think it blows for a personal computer.

But on a windows machine, if you want to use youtube you have to install flash player. A lot of people hate windows media player, so they have to download some other software. To print, you have to set up the printer on your computer. Outlook Express is total shite, so most people install Outlook proper or Mozilla Thunderbird or the like, and similarly, a lot of people these days install firefox or some alternative web browser as well on their Windows machine.

For comparison, you have to install flash on Ubuntu to use youtube, just as you would in Windows, which is easy as p.i.e., rhythmbox is a fine itunes-like media player already installed, and to set up MP3 capability is no harder than downloading itunes or somesuch to your Windows machine, it's just a matter of "enable restricted formats." To print, you plug in your printer, and select the name and model from a list and bam, it installs the drivers (unless you're really unlucky in owning some weird model printer, but you'd face that same hurdle with a Mac or, less commonly, Windows as well). The distros come with nice email clients "out of the box" and firefox is pretty much standard.

It's really not that different from a PC or Mac, except the package managers are sort of an all-in-one for the separate software-cd and the plugin-download experiences you find on a windows machine.

There's some learning involved, to be sure, but take a Mac person who has never used a Windows machine or vice versa and sit them down on the other machine and you'll have to explain to them how you install software, printers, and so on all the same, and I'm not convinced learning to use Ubuntu is any harder than switching from a Mac to PC or PC to Mac would be (at least from my own experience learning Linux and Mac from a thoroughly Windows background).

Different strokes for different folks, I guess, but I really don't think Linux is a "crap" OS... like Windows and Mac OS it just caters more toward one type of user than another. It's a dream for people like researchers, who want a powerful but flexible and customizable platform.

Mind you, I still use Windows for some testing software which is unavailable to any other platform, and also for my gaming problem

At any rate, my opinion is that it comes more down to what you need/want your OS to do than one being better than the others, just as the form-factor of the machine originally under discussion in this thread is not inherently superior or inferior (or new, by any means) - rather it is designed to be appropriate for a specific application.

For the last year or so, I've been running linux entirely within RAM. Fast, quiet, and portable, since I boot off of the USB stick. I have not had the problems Chad mentions, and am not one to monkey around with the software either.

The real limitation is when you want to interact with the myriad of windows programs that exist. Many have an open source version that will run on linux, but some just don't work as well. Synchronizing my PDA and not being able to connect to iTunes are the two I encounter frequently. Otherwise, I am entirely off of Windows.

And just to put Window 7 into perspective ...

Godwin's Law: "As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1."

I think the probability approached it, then ran smack dab into it.

[Edited because stupid Wikipedia allows URLs with apostrophes.]

Interesting that a thread started by the original died-in-the-wool MV wintel guy (uh, me) has ended with the (hilariously whimsical) invocation of Godwin's. Seriously, this has been a very interesting and, dare I say it, informative thread. I'll just say that I still don't see any excuse for any design to be that thoughtlessly horrible. However, after hearing the responses from my fellow wintel folks, it occurs to me they may be right. Perhaps this design does hit a price/utility point that will appeal to corporate America. I'm willing to stand down on the issue and wait to see how the market responds. Let's meet again next holiday season and see what happens with this design, shall we?

Until then, Happy Holidays! (NOTE TO JESS: We need a holiday emoticon)

Will this do?

(You didn't say which holiday...)

You got me! I guess I was thinking more of a red stocking cap on a smiley guy, though...