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GCN Home > 04/18/05 issue

Space savers

By Carlos A. Soto, GCN Staff

No matter how scarce your cubicle real estate, there’s a desktop computer that fits it. Sure, notebooks have become powerful enough to be primary systems, but they still don’t come with full-size keyboards and displays, and they’re usually more expensive than their desktop cousins.

Within the past year or so, space-saving computers, including all-in-one PCs, have grown in popularity, particularly in the government sector. They’ve started shipping with the Intel 915 chip set, which provides faster performance through higher bus-transfer rates and double-data-rate 2 memory support, all in a smaller chassis footprint. Combined with the new, smaller serial ATA cables connecting the hard drive to the motherboard, and a robust PCI express video card, the 915 chip set gives modern space-saving computers big-time workhorse capability.

For this review, products fell into two categories: all-in-one systems, such as the Gateway Profile 5.5 and MPC ClientPro 414; and space-saving two-piece systems, which either have particularly small CPUs, such as the Mac Mini, or allow you to easily store the CPU out of the way, such as the Dell OptiPlex SX280.

Which you choose will depend on preferences. With an all-in-one, for instance, the display you buy is the display you live with. If you don’t like it or something goes wrong, it affects the whole system. Two-piece space-savers offer more flexibility, but may not be as sleek and compact as all-in-ones.

What we found

As with any desktop PC, performance was key to our evaluation. Intel’s new subsystem is impressive, but vendors that choose to incorporate the chip giant’s integrated graphics controller hinder performance. The Dell OptiPlex SX280, for instance, employs Intel graphics and significantly lagged the Gateway Profile 5.5 in our tests, despite including more and faster memory.

Half the systems we tested came with embedded 802.11 WiFi and Bluetooth connectivity. But less than half used state-of-the-art DDR2 RAM. So space-saving computers still aren’t a commodity business where you can avoid comparing specs.

More news on related topics: Hardware, IT Infrastructure, New Products / Technology, Product Reviews



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