All-in-Ones Finally Grow Up, With Fast Graphics, SSDs, and CPUs 211
MojoKid writes "Historically, all-in-one desktop systems like the iMac, HP's TouchSmart and similar designs that incorporate a full system on the backside of a monitor, haven't offered performance that was competitive to their full-sized desktop counterparts. Part of the reason is that many of these systems are comprised of low power notebook platform PC components inside thin chassis designs with minimal airflow. However, as mobile platforms have become more powerful, so has the all-in-one PC. Dell's recently launched XPS 27 Touch, with Intel's Haswell mobile processor and an NVIDIA GeForce GT 750M on board, is an example of a new breed of AIO hitting the market now. The system is based on a 27-inch panel with 2TB of storage, a 32GB SSD cache drive, 8GB of RAM and performance in the benchmarks that keeps pace with average midrange full-sized desktops. You can even game on the machine with frame rates at the panel's 1080p native resolution with medium to high image quality. It's almost like the all-in-one finally grew up."
What fud (Score:5, Insightful)
The imac had decent specs for years.
The fact is most pcs sold have value oriented junk as only workstations and alienware bother with nice components. Most enthusiasts and gamers build their systens as a result.
Re: What fud (Score:5, Insightful)
true, but as this post is obviously a dell commercial, truth doesn't matter too much
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And we've seen AIOs from many manufacturers for years, which couldn't get out of their own way, in terms of what power users need performance-wise. iMac are a minor exception. They've had somewhat better specs but not SSD caches and 2GB GGDR5 enabled, seriously strong graphics like the new GeForce GT 750M. In fact, as I look at Apple's iMac load-out p
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And we've seen AIOs from many manufacturers for years, which couldn't get out of their own way, in terms of what power users need performance-wise. iMac are a minor exception. They've had somewhat better specs but not SSD caches and 2GB GGDR5 enabled, seriously strong graphics like the new GeForce GT 750M.
Most PCs in any form factor fifn't have all that until very, very recently!!!
Re: What fud (Score:5, Insightful)
Hole betwen Mac mini and Mac Pro (Score:2, Informative)
iMacs have been far and away the best-selling AIOs on the market
You need a Mac to develop iOS applications or to test web sites in the latest version of Safari, and Apple has made a business decision to leave a huge hole in its desktop lineup between Mac mini and Mac Pro. How much of iMac's sales are due to this?
pretty much since the first iMac was introduced
Since Apple sued eMachines over the eOne's [wikipedia.org] trade dress infringement, other PC makers haven't really tried AIO until Windows 8 brought an expectation of multitouch input to desktop operating systems.
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Re:What fud (Score:5, Insightful)
As a rule, yes. Basically bigger system = better cooling. Airflow, heat exchangers, etc are all very much volume dependent.
Generally speaking (and oversimplified) if you can halve the power consumption (=heat generation) of the CPU, GPU, etc. then you have two options:
1) Smaller - halve the capacity of the cooling system, roughly halving the minimum volume of the device.
2) Faster - double the number or power of chips, roughly doubling the performance at the same minimum device volume.
Of course if your desktop system uses a standard full-sized case and motherboard then there's probably lots of "wasted" space that can be trimmed - basically trading expandability and ease of maintenance for a more compact form factor. Once you're down to an compact motherboard and case though you can't really get much smaller without sacrificing cooling capacity. You could push things a little farther by doing away with upgradable, standards-compliant components in favor of custom-engineered solutions, but that increases costs and probably isn't worth it in most applications - once the cooling system becomes a major portion of the volume your options for further size reductions start being severely limited.
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" Basically bigger system = better cooling. Airflow, heat exchangers, etc are all very much volume dependent."
Wrong, it's surface area then airflow dependent. Since the heat exchange happens pretty much in a layer 0.0001" on the surface of the heat conducting material, large volume isn't needed, large surface area is.
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surface area + room for airflow along surface = volume.
Certainly creative engineering can arrange for increases in thermal transfer per unit volume, but for a given heat exchanger design thermal transfer actually tends to increase sublinearly with volume. For a car-style blow-through radiator for example heat transfer will tend to increase roughly linearly with face "footprint", and substantially sub-linearly with thickness.
Re:What fud (Score:5, Informative)
"fud" stands for "Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt". It doesn't mean something you disagree with.
Re:What fud (Score:5, Informative)
3.4ghz quad-core i7 w/ Turbo to 3.9ghz
32GB 1600mhz DDR3
3TB "Fusion" drive (HDD/SSD hybrid)
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680MX 2GB GDDR5
Some cursory googling suggests the 680MX is the higher performing GPU.
Re:What fud (Score:5, Informative)
Case in point: It will cost you an arm and a leg, but you can spec out a 27" iMac as follows:
3.4ghz quad-core i7 w/ Turbo to 3.9ghz
32GB 1600mhz DDR3
3TB "Fusion" drive (HDD/SSD hybrid)
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680MX 2GB GDDR5
Some cursory googling suggests the 680MX is the higher performing GPU.
Not to mention that the Mac isn't struck with 1080p. It has 2560 x 1440 at 27".
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I wonder if there are multiple XPS 27" Touch, as looking at their site shows a 1440 screen instead of 1080.
My main concern with all-in-one's though is how easy they are to do maintenance and the minor part-swap. I'm not a fan of how closed the Apple one is: I don't like having to deal with "stickers" if I have to replace the HD or something. And I have no idea of the Dell is similarly annoying.
I don't need a huge case... but something that I can at least fit my bear-claw hands in when I have to swap a bro
Re:What fud (Score:5, Informative)
Re:What fud (Score:4, Interesting)
Those are freaking fast for AIO and couldceasily trounce both the xboxone and ps4. Sure they are not 7990s in crossfire by any sense of the mean but those are niche and add $1100 to the cost of the system. For even crysis which is the most demanding game you can get by with a 670 gtx or a 7870 just ine. You could also argue a crossfire 7990s are low end too because my $3000 quadro or firepro is soo much better and can support 32 monitors etc.
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It's a 680M card. The mobile card line is terribly crippled compared to anything you can put in a desktop.
Re:What fud (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, not even close. The 680M, while supposedly on par performance with a 580 according to notebookcheck (the physical specs on the cards makes me seriously doubt that given the 680M has roughly double the core count and about 300 gflops higher theoretical performance than the desktop 580) is still quite a top-notch mobile GPU.
Terribly crippled? Physically speaking, the 680M is just a typical desktop 670 chip with lower power consumption.
Re:What fud (Score:4, Informative)
Not really.
I use a 660M. It's basically a desktop 650 with a bit of an underclock. The 670MX is basically an underclocked 660, the 675MX is a 670MX with a wider memory bus, the 680M is basically an underclocked 670, and the 680MX is basically an underclocked 680. Now, these underclocks can be rather significant - 25% in some cases. But with the way clock speeds affect power consumptions, that means you're getting 75% the graphics power for 50% the electrical power. Sounds like a good thing, when it comes to laptops.
Hell, if you're willing to lug around a massive system and drop a few grand on it, you can get SLI laptops - dual 680MX. That's within spitting distance of a top-of-the-line 690. And that's not even getting into the 7xx series, because those are still coming out.
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Re:What fud (Score:4, Informative)
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Yeah, I agree. But, to be fair, there are more factors now than back in the '90s when megahertz was the main thing they were improving. AMD doesn't do a perfect job with their processor naming, but they do give you a number to help get an idea of where a particular processor fits in their line of products. Interestingly over the last decade the spread between the number and the frequency has gotten to be rather huge.
GPUs OTOH, I don't think any of the major vendors take that seriously. Trying to figure out
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i7s should only be used if you have specific purpose in mind that will leverage the hyperthreading like video encoding etc
Running some virtual machines would fall into this category.
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Which is my point.
The author says all AIO are junk including the imac. Not true but sadly close on the pc side. Since you own a shop I am surprised ypu remend such systems as they are a pain in the ass to repair. Shit Apple is gluing things like batteries to the damn case
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The repairability is my main reason for not buying or recommending AIO. Laptops are bad enough, but at least with laptops there's a legitimate reason for it. They need to be small and protable. AIO are kind of questionable as they could just as easily go back to CPUs that lie flat on their side and just change the way that ventilation is done. Set the monitor on top of the CPU and attach clips. There you go. A computer that's very similar to an AIO and a ton easier to repair.
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That's just it how often do you actually repair machines?
The average person just buys another one anyway when it stops working. If the average components last 3- 5 years by the time you shell out parts you might as well have gotten a new machine anyways.
Or a car analogy. When your at 300,000 miles and your second engine you might as well give it up and upgrade to something a bit newer.
I used to love to build my own. but I actually value my time. if I charge myself a decent hourly rate for building and O
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Or a car analogy. When your at 300,000 miles and your second engine you might as well give it up and upgrade to something a bit newer.
Your analogy is bad. If you're on your second engine by 300k miles, you're doing something seriously wrong. Any car engine made in the last 15-17 years can easily get 500k miles before their first rebuild. Before the subframe in the front of my saturn broke(love those salty winter roads here in Canada), my car was already at 550k miles(885k km) and that's not even a record on the Series 1 or Series 2 engines, the 'hand me down' van(it has a 3.8L 3800 series) I got from my grandparents has 680k miles on i
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What are you doing? Commuting from Vancouver to Toronto?
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What are you doing? Commuting from Vancouver to Toronto?
I used to drive from Southern Ontario to Indiana every week, did that for years. My grandparents old van on the other hand they took it from Ontario to Florida every year, plus they'd take trips all over Canada and the US in it. My car was on it's 17th year, and the van will be 20 years old in two months.
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The average person just buys another one anyway when it stops working. If the average components last 3- 5 years by the time you shell out parts you might as well have gotten a new machine anyways.
Yes... if you can swap memory chips and hard drive and fans, without too much trouble: I think for most people, that should be enough.
The problem is of course... mechanical hard drives frequently fail, and so do mechanical fans.
Easy DIMM swapping is necessary for memory upgrades.
6GB of RAM might be gre
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Um the OP said this:
Apple offered to replace my hard drive for free due to some recall a year ago so I did that simply because they offered. That took a day. Big deal. One day out of four years.
Cable clutter (Score:2)
Set the monitor on top of the CPU and attach clips.
Can the monitor draw power from the computer, or vice versa? And can the monitor send multitouch coordinates back to the computer? The big selling point of the original iMac was less cable clutter.
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I'm pretty sure this "article" is really just Dell advertising.
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Re:What fud (Score:5, Interesting)
Exactly right. When I started my current job, I had an iMac sitting on my desk; I was initially skeptical, but as soon as I saw the machine specs (as I was installing Linux onto it), I fell in love; it's a very nice machine, and my workplace had spiced it up further by putting a lot more RAM and disk into it. It's one of the most pleasant desktops I've ever worked with (and the resolution is amazing).
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I generally build my own desktops because it's the only way of not getting infested with Intel and Microsoft products and still get a decent rig. The selection of desktops that don't use Intel or MS products is pretty limited. But, by building it myself, I can get what I want without having to give money to monopolists.
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The imac had decent specs for years.
Except for graphics, unless you spent a lot more. (iMac owner here.)
Fortunately, Apple seems to be putting decent graphics into the base level iMac now, but that certainly was not the case for years.
Usage Enforcer Time (Score:5, Informative)
Nothing is "comprised of" anything else. The word you are looking for is composed. An computer comprises components. Components compose or "make up" a computer.
If enough people misuse a word long enough, that becomes the new meaning.
Re:Usage Enforcer Time (Score:5, Funny)
Nothing is "comprised of" anything else. The word you are looking for is composed. An computer comprises components. Components compose or "make up" a computer.
If enough people misuse a word long enough, that becomes the new meaning.
Oh, the irony!
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
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I could care less.
[ I actually agree with you you, careless use of language is the careless use of one of humanity's most powerful tools. But I could not resist the opportunity for such irony.]
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I could care less.
[ I actually agree with you you, careless use of language is the careless use of one of humanity's most powerful tools. But I could not resist the opportunity for such irony.]
So, with "I could care less", are you being "ironic" or "careless"?
(If you could care less, then why don't you? On the other hand, if you couldn't care less, then the amount of care has reached a pretty low limit)
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I for one am sick of this culture of "nobody's wrong, we're all right, we're all winners." It's not going to help our society and will destroy us in the long run.
Well, that's a false equivalence. You're conflating the "nobody's wrong" anti-aggression/anti-competition feminist agenda with that of communication protocol tolerance. While I agree that competition and even a bit of aggression are healthy components of society -- indeed boys are falling behind in the new non-competitive environments, and even simply challenging them with "betcha can't do X" causes them to perform better than positive reinforcement; Yet teachers are foolishly fearful of fostering compet
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You make it sound like this is a new phenomena. The fact that so many people even notice suggests that this is not the case. It's only relatively recently that schools were common enough for people to learn to write; as a result most of the ungrammatical language and spelling errors aren't available for perusal. Then there's folks like Shakespeare that couldn't spell to save their life, and editors of their works have fixed most of the spelling errors and unified the spelling choices a bit.
As for not correc
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No he ain't. He be all ironical.
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Honestly I don't really have a problem with spelling, grammar, or punctuation errors; provided they don't interfere with comprehension. Even misuse of homonyms rarely clouds clarity, though it may be slightly jarring.
But when people start using a word to refer to something unrelated, or minimally related, then that's something well worth pointing out. For two reasons:
1) if it's an honest mistake then you are improving their vocabulary, and with it their ability to communicate clearly within the applicable
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2) if the misuse becomes common then the concept-space itself is lessened by the loss/declarification of the original word, reducing everybody's ability to communicate clearly.
This! This is so true with 'AS' people. "Please listen carefully AS our menus have recently changed". Whatever happen to 'since' and 'because'? 'AS' means everything nowadays.
"AS I'm doing my homework, I listen to music". What wrong with the word 'while'?
The same holds true for the 'myself' people. "Myself and Bob went to town." What's up with that?
</RANT>
Re:Usage Enforcer Time (Score:4, Interesting)
There are no assinine rules of English spelling... because there are no rules to English spelling. The Oxford crew built up a dictionary of observed spellings, not attempting to impose any order, then suddenly everyone took them as canonical. Before the OED, there was no standardised orthography, but most writers were at least internally consistent -- the OED inadvertently broke the language fundamentally by describing a hodge-podge of different and inconsistent regional and personal styles.
I'd love to see a genuinely consistent English orthography evolve, but most people who propose attempting it impose a particular dialectal model...
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For example, compare the Received Pronunciation of "bath" to what they say in Tennessee.
Crick? i.e, "He warshed himself in the crick."
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There are no assinine rules of English spelling... because there are no rules to English spelling.
I defiantly agree with you. In principal, bad spelling could effect understanding. But as long as you reed it out loud, the sounds recapture there meaning. If the Japanese can hubble with wards such as kurisumasu, so can we.
j/k
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Nothing is "comprised of" anything else. The word you are looking for is composed. An computer comprises components. Components compose or "make up" a computer.
If enough people misuse a word long enough, that becomes the new meaning.
I could care less! :P
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Do you remember the first All-In-Ones? (Score:3)
Advertisement (Score:5, Insightful)
Still using mobile components (Score:2)
And yet, the Dell still has a mobile GPU.
Best buys? (Score:4, Insightful)
The Power of a Midrange Desktop PC (Score:4, Informative)
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That price *includes* Windows 8 Pro, 64 bit. It really is an all-in-one, unless you use linux; in which case you might as well build your own from parts that will last longer than this sum total unit.
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With the limited use of Linux for high end graphical tasks, such as gaming, CAD, or Microsoft's locked in tools such as Outlook, it usually makes more sense to run the Windows host as a Windows host directly and run up to half a dozen independent Linux virtual machines on the same host. The well defined virtual environment insulates the desktop or laptop owner from the difficulties of resolving driver issues with whatever chips were added at the last minute, especially if running legacy Linux environments w
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You're doing it wrong. Run KVM and let windows be a guest. You can even let it have access to the video card.
Not a story. (Score:5, Insightful)
This is an advert.
Not only that (Score:3)
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This is an advert.
The real question is, was Timothy told to put the story up by his bosses, i.e. Slashdot is consciously trying to stick in advertising, or he he JUST THAT STUPID.
At last (Score:5, Funny)
When the hero shoots out the bad guy's monitors and the computers stop working, it will make sense.
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And the villain is out $2100 at least
If I use the Disable Advertising button... (Score:5, Funny)
...will this "story" go away?
Toss in a battery (Score:2)
I use an all-in-one. I'm quite happy w/ it - it's connected via an UPS, which also powers my router, as well as USB powered toys, like my phone, my iPod and other's. It has 6 USB slots - 4 behind (all used) and 2 extra on the side.
I just wish they'd toss in an optional battery. That way, in the event of power outages (during storms), it would do a better job, while the UPS could be dedicated to the router. No, it won't be portable, but it does save one from losing one's work if one is in the middle of
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They do, it's called the small ups under the desk.
I'd rather use that than a built in battery any day.
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Glossy touchscreen? No VESA mount? (Score:4, Insightful)
Eliminates clutter (Score:4, Informative)
I bought an HP all-in-one a few years ago to replace a traditional floor tower, monitor and external speakers. With most things being built in, plus the integrated wireless, I eliminated 10 cables, 2 external boxes, and one power brick. A full-featured laptop could also have worked, but it is nice to have the big screen, and I leave it on all the time anyway.
Re: Eliminates clutter (Score:2)
... Or you could just plug your laptop into an external monitor.
Re: Eliminates clutter (Score:3)
Your computer will be obsolete a long time before the expensive built in monitor but you'll have to trash them both together.
It's a friggin' laptop (Score:4, Interesting)
The AI1's are essentially a laptop with a stand and no cover. Have fun upgrading it or fixing it when there's an internal problem. Twice the money for half the computer. Sounds like an idea Apple would come up with. Oh... wait...
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Tablet PCs are Better (Score:3)
Units that are designed to resemble tablets, with no stand or a retractable stand, can be used in more variety than units like this Dell be advertised by the article.
Take a look at Lenovo's Horizon 27 inch or Sony's Vaio Tap 20.
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ideacentre-horizon-27-review-all-in-one,3564.html [tomshardware.com]
http://store.sony.com/p/Sony-Desktop,-20-inch,-Tap-20,-VAIO-Touch,-VAIO-Desktop,-Core-i5,-Windows-8,-3rd-gen-Intel,-touch-display,-all-in-one,-touchscreen/en/p/SVJ20217CXW [sony.com]
Both can be laid flat, the Lenovo unit can be angled well by it's strong spring stand from 90 degrees down to 5 degrees of the desk making it comfortable to lean over and use to draw. It also comes with a suite of games that can be played while it's flat, from board games to billiards or air hockey.
I think all-in-ones should be going this direction. The instances where they will be used typically in this form factor will not require their screen site to get larger and their performance is easily enough to handle almost anything typical these days, so the disadvantage of not being able upgrade individual pieces of the hardware (screen or internals) is moot.
Missing devices.anyone ? (Score:2)
Key to the old tower is we can add to it.TV tuner card , expansions of all kinds , decent sound cards etc, Expansion and space in the case for other devices ( IDE cards and old drives , drive trays etc There's a lot of things we can do with a tower we can't with all in ones. For the amateur it may be ok , but for the serious computer enthusiast all in ones are too limited to be considered a suitable platform.
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So dell caught up finally. (Score:2)
Imac's have been way ahead of dell for years in the "all in one" design world. So now Dell finally stopped making low grade garbage all in ones?
Here is to hoping they used the right parts so I can hackintosh it. Oh wait, they cost as much as an iMac.... Ahhh...
Silly advertisement (Score:2)
This isn't news. SlashAdvertorials will continue until we stand up and embarrass the products enough the advertisers tell the editors to stop this stealth nonsense.
750m? (Score:2)
When did the 750m became a solid performer exactly? It's a piece of junk that's just good to run Aero, just like any of its predecessors in the mobile GPU arena, where only the top line is a mediocre performer matching the "mid-range" desktop GPU.
So, nothing changed, really.
But they still aren't selling (Score:2)
With some things, they just never learn. And sadly, this march is being led by Microsoft and the OEMs are beholden to their power. We had touchscreen in the 80s. Nobody wanted it then either.
Slashvertisement (Score:2)
This is BLATANT paid for advertising, especially with the ridiculous title. All in ones finally grow up?
Thing is, do they really think there are Slashdot readers that give a flying fuck about this underwhelming PC.
Jobs laughing in grave (Score:2)
Still a ripoff (Score:2)
I built my own (Score:2)
http://imgur.com/unu0ROc [imgur.com]
It's an ergotron neo-flex with a mini-tower and a vesa-compatible monitor on the front. It's a computer that I can put away every day.
I used to have gaming laptops for this purpose, but I got tired of them dying heat deaths. I can upgrade the monitor and processing parts separately, and use whatever peripherals I want.
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"I can't afford" != "isn't available"
Maybe the article should be change to more of a "finally the last of the PC market catches up with Apple for AIO desktop specs".
(if this was a Dell advertisement, it would appear that their marketing department is taking inspiration from their engineering department)
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if this was a Dell advertisement, it would appear that their marketing department is taking inspiration from their engineering department
Isn't that how it's supposed to work? The problem is that they're supposed to be insipred by engineering's products, not their incomptence.
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more of a "their marketers are living as far in the past as their engineers". Not exactly a good place to find inspiration.
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