Lenovo IdeaCentre A600 (3011-4BU)

We were impressed enough with the $699 Lenovo IdeaCentre A600 we reviewed earlier this year for it to become our Editors' Choice for value all-in-one PCs. The Lenovo IdeaCentre A600 (3011-4BU) is the upgraded $1,399 model, complete with Blu-ray playback, TV tuner, wireless everything, and a neat four-in-one remote control that may actually be useful for once. It trumps anything that HP and Dell have put out in the all-in-one space, but falls just short of unseating our current mainstream all-in-one PC champion, the Apple iMac .
SPEC DATA:
Price as Tested: $1,399.00 Direct
Type: General Purpose, Media, All-in-one
Processor Family: Intel Core 2 Duo
RAM: 4 GB
Storage Capacity: 1000 GB
RAID: No
Graphics Card: ATI Radeon HD 3650
Primary Optical Drive: Blu-Ray Disc
Monitor Type: LCD Widescreen
Screen Size: 21.5 inches
SOURCE:www.pcmag.com

Polywell Poly ITX-9400B

Polywell has produced a bunch of technology-forward desktops in the past, including just about all of the latest processing technologies (Phenom II X4, Core i7, Core 2 Quad, GeForce, Radeon HD, and so on) as they are released. The Poly ITX-9400B ($699 direct) is no different in this respect, incorporating Nvidia's ION nettop platform. ION is a combination of an Nvidia GeForce 9400 chipset and Intel's Atom processor. It's kind of like what's in the Apple Mac mini but with a lower-powered processor and the addition of Blu-ray movie playback. A compact PC that doubles as a Blu-ray player is a great combo for movie buffs and home-theater geeks. However, you'd better have built up quite a library of Blu-ray discs if you're choosing this system over similarly priced, more general-purpose desktops. Video playback and the usual Web-surfing duties of a nettop are about all it's really good for—multimedia creation is too demanding for it.

SPEC DATA:

Price as Tested: $699.00 Direct
Type: General Purpose, Media, Value
Processor Family: Intel Atom
RAM: 4 GB
Storage Capacity: 320 GB
RAID: No
Graphics Card: nVidia ION/GeForce 9400
Primary Optical Drive: Blu-Ray Disc

SOURCE:www.pcmag.com

Dell Inspiron 1545 (i1545-004ST)

For many families and school-bound teenagers, there's only room in the budget for a laptop with basic amenities. The Dell Inspiron 1545 (i1545-004ST) meets two of the most basic laptop requirements: Both its screen and hard drive are large enough to handle the gamut of multimedia tasks. It isn't a speed demon by any stretch, as its Intel Pentium-branded processor lags behind the mainstream Intel Core 2 Duos, but you won't hear a peep from frugal shoppers. Available at your local Staples for $650, this whopper of a bargain comes with a nice 15.6-inch widescreen, 320GB of storage space, and 4GB of memory—all of which should be enough to offset the processor's shortcomings.
SPEC DATA:
Price as Tested: $650.00 Street
Type: General Purpose, Media, Value
Operating System: Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium
Processor Name: Intel Pentium T4200
Processor Speed: 2 GHz
RAM: 4 GB
Weight: 5.8 lb
Screen Size: 15.6 inches
Screen Size Type: widescreen
Graphics Card: Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 4500MHD
Storage Capacity: 320 GB
Networking Options: 802.11a/g
Primary Optical Drive: DVD+R DL
SOURCE:www.pcmag.com

Maximum Contour

The designers at Kinesis Corp. need either less coffee or more oxygen. The Kinesis Advantage Pro USB ($359 list) challenges the notion of a flat keyboard by affixing keys to a bowl-like chassis. Your palms rest on the ridge, and your fingers drape into a ravine walled with letters and numbers. Typing in this position nullifies wrist movement while keeping stress on your forearms to a minimum.

SOURCE:www.pcmag.com

MyKeyO Keyboard with Organizer

Even though many of us use computers, our desks are still strewn about with other stuff we need—Post-It Notes, pens, pencils, aspirin, business cards (including our own), paper clips, and so on. If we're especially organized, we might have a container for each type of item. The new MyKeyO Keyboard Organizer offers a different method for organizing most of that clutter. Nestled under the standard QWERTY and quite sturdy keyboard is a tray with 14 compartments for holding your indispensable items.

SOURCE:www.pcmag.com

BFG GeForce GTX 275 OC

The BFG GeForce GTX 275 OC ($250 street) graphics card holds 896MB of GDDR3 and a single Nvidia GPU with the core, stream, and memory clocks nudged up to 648 MHz, 1.44 GHz, and 2,304 MHz. The board is attractively priced, but doesn't quite break the $3.00 per frame per second mark. Still, it's a good value, and even in a game as demanding as Far Cry 2, it's fairly capable. Performance won't get close to 50 fps in such a graphics-intensive title, but even with anti-aliasing off, hitting that mark requires a far more expensive card. For the majority of games, though, this board will work well. In short, you'll get clean graphics, not cleaned out.

SOURCE:www.pcmag.com

Smooth Creations Far Cry 2 chassis

One company on this globe that has an extraordinary appeal towards Guru3D.com and vice versa is Smooth Creations.
These guys offer exactly what you guys like to see so much, enthusiast high-end kit for our gaming rigs. Now since Guru3D.com matured to the nice age of ten years we collaborated with Smooth Creations and are giving away one of their custom design chassis, well... with a little Guru3D.com branding.
So this little article is showing a product that you guys can actually win. Be amazed, be shocked, hate it, like it... whatever really. But once I've shown you what you are about to see, you'll surely appreciate a chassis design as shown here.
Before we begin this article, or pretty much, showcase of this chassis I like to once again introduce you to the guys that created it. Smooth Creations.
Smooth Creations is a company that is always raising the bar and pushing forward to the next level, custom made PCs that are totally pimped up. Think of the Alienware series, Vadim PCs and Voodoo PCs. Now that market obviously is difficult as Vadim is out of business, Voodoo PCs is a subdivision of HP and is hanging in there (just). So we always find it really interesting to see if there are other companies out there building PCs at that uber high-end.
SmoothCreations is such a company. You can purchase pre-built customized PCs, or if you have won the lottery, pick out your own PC and have it custom tailored. There are no real limits here, you pick your components from low-end to high-end, regular cooling, water-cooling, single GPU or 3-way SLI/CrossfireX, you name it and they make it. But they are known and feared for one particular thing... their customized chassis designs, spray paints, which are just too amazing.
Skulls, flames, dragons, mermaids, flags, space designs, customized designs, you name it and they slap it onto that chassis, and if you really want to get your freak on, they'll paint the keyboard, mouse and monitor in the same theme as well.

SOURCE:www.pcmag.com