 | ASUS Eee Top ET2203-B0017 21.6-Inch Black All-in-One Desktop PC (Windows 7 Home Premium)
Flawed design and Horrible Repair Service -- 2010-09-03
This product has a serious design flaw. When you place it on the table, it is not stable. When my kid accidentally hit the table, it fell face down and the screen cracked. So I delivered it to ASUS's office at Fremont, California to repair. The real horrible experience started. I was told it would take 4 to 5 days, and because it was an accident, I had to pay for it. They would send me an email for the price and authorization. It is now 13 days. The worst of it, I hear nothing from them. I called technical support to find out the status once per week. I always told that they would send me an email in next 24/48 hours. Nothing happened. In the meantime, my Dell notebook had a battery recharge problem. I called on Thursday and a repair person came on Monday to fix it.
I checked on the Web and found out that many people had similar horrible experience. If you do not want to go through it, do not buy this product or any product from ASUS.
Great product at a reasonable price -- 2010-08-28
I have been using it for the last two months now. It is a great product at a reasonable price. I am a satisfied customer.
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 | Apple iMac MC413LL/A 21.5-Inch Desktop
A great computer, but....... -- 2010-07-01
There is no doubt that the iMac is a great computer. I purchased it Feb 2010. The reason I spent considerably more than I would have had I bought another PC was for Apple's reputation for outstanding product quality but mostly for their well deserved reputation for excellent service. So why did I rate it just two stars? Within about two weeks after purchase, the caps lock light on the wireless keyboard stopped working. I could get it working again only by either restarting the computer or restarting the keyboard. Then I could not type a capital O by depressing the shift key. It would work by depressing the caps lock key. That stopped after four or five days. After repeated stoppages of the caps lock light, Apple directed me to return the keyboard for another one, which I did. I had the new keyboard less than a week when that problem started again. Within two weeks, Apple had me replace the keyboard again. In the meantime, I had had four or five instances where the computer just cut off. It would not restart until I unplugged it, plugged it back in. On two occasions the slide show feature of iPhoto quit midway through a slideshow. After enduring all this for two or three weeks, and talking with online support (by this time I had had quite a few conversations with these good people), I took the iMac to the closest Apple store for them to check it out. The unit was ready in two days. They could not find any reason for all my problems so they reloaded the operating system. Everything worked for about five days when the keyboard problem started again. I have talked with Apple since then, as recently as 28 June. I was told to call back and they are going to walk me through completely erasing the computer and reloading everything again from the disks that came with the computer. I haven't done that yet. Yes, the caps light has cut off again, and I restarted it, but everything else is working well. Except that I have had to unplug/plug it in again to get it started at least once. Right now I'm making out with all this, but I will call them soon to do the reloading thing with them. I just don't want to do it right now. BUT, I feel certain that this will do the trick. There obviously is a permanent glitch in my current setup that just reloading the operating program can't resolve. If this latest step doesn't work, I firmly believe that Apple is going to tell me to bring my computer back, they'll give me another one. I have great faith in them. In all fairness, I will update this review as soon as all my problems are resolved.
OK Computing, TERRIBLE Gaming. -- 2010-06-13
Listen, we gotta set some things straight here. First of all, if your a gamer, i need to ask why you are shopping for a mac. A mac boasts very nice graphics, and i must say, they are impressive. Although appealing and very shiny, macs have more issues than the amount of pennies youll spend buying them.
99% of downloadable online games are only compatible with windows. Nuff said.
Point 1 PC.
Also, the mac overheats and freezes up after extensive use of the high graphics. (extensive meaning just 1 hour) Thats right, I cant even play RUNESCAPE without the nightmarish abomination's browser jamming and being forced to shut down the mac.
Point 2 PC.
I must admit. If your the kind of guy that likes to surf the web, spam messages on myspace, or email, whatever, this is for you. So yea, if you want a family computer, go ahead. Get it.
Point 1 mac
The macs just dont cut it. Its pretty much a white PC with better virus protection and all white. When you get down to it, macs rip you off in the end because, without amazons great deals, they cost hundreds more than alienware desktops (and may i add, alienware desktops are far better for gaming than macs) What would be really nice is if they came in different colors, but PCs dont do that either so...
Point 3 PC.
When my dad bought this stupid machine for me, i was depressed for awhile. Its the mouse. Mouse sucks, takes months to get used to.
Point 4 PC
Keyboard is too hard to type. Cant press ENTER without hitting the \ key or shift. Ive already made 29 spelling errors in this review because of it.
Point 5 PC
Macs have nice virus protection. Unless your a download maniac that clicks on every advertisement he sees, Macs wont do much. Still, its nice not to do constant virus scans on AVG.
Point 2 Mac
Commercials fail. they try to chop down PCs by making PC the nerd. In reality, if you spend [...] bucks on a mac, your a nerd with issues.
Point 6 PC
Chuck norris has a PC. 43 In fact.
Point 62998 PC
In the end, PC beats mac 62998 to 2. Good Fight.
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 | Lenovo IdeaCentre Q150 Desktop PC
not bad -- 2010-08-09
not bad at all... I mean it's a great kitchen computer. I bought it just so people don't have to go to my home office to use the PC in my home they can surf the net and check email from this kitchen Pc. I did upgrade it to Windows 7 home premium... every thing is just great.
not exactly as shown -- 2010-07-20
Though its a great little media computer. which is why I got it. this one does not have the invidia ion graphics and the HDMI interface as shown in the picture. If thats what you are after make sure you get the right one. since all the pictures showed an HDMI outlet I thought it had that..... wrong. This particular version doens't. That said it is quiet and quick to set up. I am enjoying it for the purpose I intended. so for somethign this inexpensive you do get a decent little computer.
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 | Apple Mac Pro MB535LL/A Desktop
Awesome... -- 2010-08-15
Bought this computer to replace my Dell Precision 330 engineering workstation. The hard drive had gone out and I had replaced with Linux which had been running for over ten years. Got used to the command line so I bought an Apple power book to play with BSD Linux under the terminal. Got so drawn in by the user interface of OS X that I stayed.
My 12" power book only lived for four years before the hard drive went out and replacing was such a chore that when it went the second time I decided to only get desktops.
When considering a computer I knew I wanted to live in OS X but be able to run a lot of engineering cad programs that only run on windows. I knew that the Mac Pro had enough horsepower to virtualize them while still having an acceptable everyday experience.
This thing is a workhorse!!! I allocated only 2GB of memory to run Windows 7 under VMWare Fusion and it handles all of what I wanted easily with 4GB left under the hood.
The only thing I wished I would have upgraded to a 1TB hard drive but I bought off amazon because it was the cheapest source. Apple was going to charge me for the hard drive. You can't customize your workstation and order off the internet. Also I might put in another graphics card with a "real" DVI port. The graphics card which comes in it supports dual monitor but you have to buy a mini display port adapter to hook to DVI which bothers me somewhat.
All in all, extremely happy with my purchase, super happy with customer service who made some problems I had moving the ship date due to unexpected travel effortless, really looking forward to upgrading this thing in another ten years!!!
A few notes about buying a Mac Pro. -- 2010-07-16
The new Mac Pro is nothing if not fast and fun to work with. There are a few things that I had to do some research on.
For more USB ports you will need an "Express" PCi card. Not just any PCi card that says it works with OS X. The Belkin USB 2.0 Express Pci Card 4-EXTERNAL/1-INTERNAL, model #F5U252 comes highly recommended by Apple and is available here on Amazon.
If you want to add a second internal superdrive there is the Samsung Internal SATA 'Super-MultiDrive' DVD DL/CD w/LightScribe and the Pioneer DVR-218L Internal DVD/CD Writer with Serial ATA Interface both available from Other World Computing [...]. Amazon lists these too but will redirect you to OWC.
You might also find yourself having to update some software for the sake of OS X Snow Leopard. I was using CS2 versions of Adobe programs. Everything has worked but I will have to update InDesign to CS5. Fortunately Adobe offers 30-day trial versions that you can actually print from and create PDFs with. I also had to replace an HP printer, but it was five years old.
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 | ViewSonic VOT132 Mini Desktop PC
VOT132 -- 2010-08-13
Pro:
Great PC for surfing the web and email. Performance is excellent for such a small form factor. Liked the first one so much , bought a second.
Con:
Fan gets a bit loud when using the unit. No internal optical drive.
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 | ASUS Eee Top ET2010AGT-B017E 20-Inch Touchscreen All-in-One Desktop PC (Black)
Good all around computer, not great. -- 2010-07-14
I bought this computer for the very specific purpose of being a secondary computer that also had an HDMI in so I could use it as second monitor or hook up to ps3 etc... There are not many all in one touch screens for this price that have an hdmi in and have a better cpu than an atom. If you can get it around 600 with rebate it's not a bad deal. Windows experience rating is 4.7 based on the cpu, everything else on the machine scores 5 or higher. However, this machine is not fast. It is much faster than a netbook, can play full screen high def hulu, youtube no problem. Don't expect it to do too much and you will be happy. It can run office, surf the web, and listen to music but thats about the max for multi tasking because of the 2gb of ram, 4 would have helped quite a bit I think.
It does actually run Left 4 Dead 2 at 720p with all settings on medium really well. So I would use that as your benchmark for gaming. Again this computer is quite capable of day to day tasks but does slow down once in a while and is definitely lacking in the cpu department.
Build quality is ok, the case made some typical plastic creeks when I moved it around but it is a desktop so that shouldn't be too much of an issue. The touchscreen works great. I have also used an hp touchsmart and I would say the asus screen is a little more accurate (although it is the same optical touch technology). The viewing angles on the monitor are not very good but are acceptable at this price level. I have not used the keyboard and mouse that it came with so can't comment on those.
I would say my biggest complains with the system are:
1: The speakers suck. It is a very thin and light all in one, but the speakers are on par with a small laptop.
2: Monitor viewing angles. I know its a cheap unit but its meant to be used at off angle viewing (standing above it in the kitchen etc...). Would have been nice to include higher quality display.
3. Glossy screen. What isn't these days though.
4: CPU not overclockable. I know this is not a common feature but the cpu runs at very low power and heat levels, I think it could easily be pushed a little harder and it would definitely help performance.
Overall I would rate it 3.5 out of 5 (if amazon let me) which is not a bad score. If you keep your expectations reasonable this is a very capable touchscreen all in one at a good price.
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 | Apple Mac mini MC239LL/A Desktop
robust and small -- 2010-09-07
This is one of the smallest desktops I have ever had. I was worried that it might overheat and not work properly. It works great. And often faster and more efficiently than my bigger units. I don't know how they achieved such fantastic robustness. The unit is also noise free. Bigger desktops have massive fan units that make so much noise that it is hard to think sometimes. This one has no noise at all. Amazing.
Oct 2009 Mac mini Computer (MC239LL/A) -- 2010-08-02
I thought that existing owners of earlier Mac mini Computers might find my observations useful.
I recently purchased a used Mac mini (the MC239LL/A released in Oct 2009) to replace a spring 2006 mini (first generation Intel with Core Duo processor).
My 'old' mini has the much maligned GMA 950 graphics processor and, although it has worked OK for playing DVDs (and fine for audio tasks), that seemed to be about as much as it could do (trying to play some high resolution videos was completely unsuccessful with much video 'stuttering' and freeze-ups).
When the revised Intel minis were released in the spring of 2009, with the Nvidea GForce 9400M graphics device, I wondered if it might provide a genuine improvement over my 2006 mini.
The answer is a resounding yes ! It may not be as fast as a PC with a stand-alone video card but compared to my first generation Intel mini the Oct 2009 mini is a race horse.
Although the mini 'Wikipedia' article (a storehouse of information) says that the Oct 2009 minis have to run 'Snow Leopard' that is not correct. I've been running my 2006 mini off an external FireWire drive for several years and, when I got my 'new-used' Oct 2009 mini (once I made sure that it booted OK off its internal drive - with Snow Leopard installed), I hooked-up my FireWire drive and rebooted the Oct 2009 mini .... it came up without any problems (there were a couple of 'changes are detected' messages but I 'clicked-OK' and that was all).
What forcefully showed me how much better the Oct 2009 mini was than the spring 2006 mini was that it is now possible to play a DVD, running in Windows XP that is itself being run under VMware's 'Fusion' environment which is running as a Mac OS X application. That was totally impossible on the older mini (spring 2006; first generation Intel CPU). (Note: the software being used to show the DVD in Windows XP is the 'VLC' application. I tried to load an old version of 'WinDVD' but kept getting peculiar error messages and, from everything I read off-the-Web, no-one has been able to get WinDVD to run in a 'virtual' environment. When running XP from 'BootCamp' there was no problem on the old mini to run 'WinDVD 8'.)
Now you may be wondering why I bought a used mini from Oct 2009 instead of the recently released (June 2010) minis ? Two reasons : money and some future planes. Although the most recently released minis (June 2010) have an even faster video processor (Nvidea GForce 320M) than the 2009 design from what I've been able to tell (reading) it does not seem to show the great improvement that was immediately apparent when the 2009 minis were first released in March 2009. I was able to buy my Oct 2009 mini for what I thought was a bit more than a hundred dollars less than a new (2010) mini (my 2009 mini has 4 GB RAM) would cost me and, in the not too distant future, I intend opening-up my 'new' mini to gain access to its two SATA ports. My ultimate goal is to have two 3.5 inch SATA drives connected to the 2009 mini and it seemed foolish to spend the money for one of the sleek now 'unibody' minis when I'm planning to do that.
- Paul
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 | Acer AM3400-B2072 Desktop with P206H 20-Inch LCD Display Bundle
Good performer for the money -- 2010-07-24
Display looks great. Computer is a solid performer for the money -- no problems. Lots of USB ports. Was easy to create backup DVD disks and apps/drivers DVD disk. One gets a lot of value for the money w/ Acer products. Rated it at four stars, as I would reserve a five-star rating for a computer with a faster CPU.
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