Opinions on All In One Personal Computers

I have a Sony all-in-one!

The reason I have it is because the owners were gonna toss it because it stopped working after a little over a year.

I asked to take it and they didnt care as they decided to build a new PC and were gonna junk it.

I brought it home..opened it up and discovered that they use many parts from both PC's and Laptops.

After some mucking around, I diagnosed the HDD as being toasted and bought a new WD Caviar Blue 640GB to replaced the OEM Hitachi Deskstar 320GB that came in the machine.

Put on windows7 pro x64 added 2GB Ram and I now have myself a ($2000.00 LMAO All-in-one) for about a 160 dollar investment!

Would I buy one new..probably not, but it is a nice unit and is awesome for photo work! 22" LCD is bright and sharp, and its very silent!

Like most retail machines, the stock RAM is garbage, the HDD was trash,,obviously,, and the DVD drive is this weird sized proprietary thing that would be nearly impossible to replace if it died--cept to pay SONY $100,000 for a model specific one!

This one has a T7500 CPU in it, and does have a decent 8600M GT Nvidia Graphics chip in it. It also has an easily accessible slot for a secondary HDD which is nice!

Media card reader built in and can take 4GB RAM, (All of which is recognized on x64 Win7.

Overall, nice to have for space saving, great screen, pretty fast, and plays alot of different games with little issue!

Again, I would not buy one--only because they are too expensive for what you can build now in a custom PC, at a cheaper price point.
 
So Laquer Head, were you able to get the Western Digital hard drive to fit inside the case of this All-In-One Computer, or is the hard drive you bought presently outside the case?

Hitachi hard drives are known for being poor quality. I would never buy one unless Hitachi drastically improves the quality of their components.
 
ignite-me said:
Mates why don't you chose MAC instead of this?
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I would prefer a Macintosh over an All-In-One Computer. But my own personal opinion of Macintosh is they are overpriced. I get everything I want from a custom built desktop computer and dual booting with Linux Ubuntu and Windows.

If someone else wants to spend that much for a Macintosh that is their choice.
 
AIO PCs are basically laptop components with a desktop sized screen with a laptop price tag. The only thing they're missing is a battery and it's effectively a laptop.

At that point, why not just buy a laptop with a decent sized display?
 
2048Megabytes said:
I would prefer a Macintosh over an All-In-One Computer. But my own personal opinion of Macintosh is they are overpriced. I get everything I want from a custom built desktop computer and dual booting with Linux Ubuntu and Windows.

If someone else wants to spend that much for a Macintosh that is their choice.
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They aren't over priced and you cannot build a PC spec for spec with the same hardware and have it be cheaper. Apple just uses the highest end parts. An IPS support LCD screen (standard in the iMac 27") is near or over $1,000 for the LCD itself.

As for all-in-one systems, they have their place. At my work, there are lots of older buildings. These buildings have limited number of power drops, and some are on a historical protection list (meaning we can't modify the building). Lots of all-in-one machine only take 1 power plug, which is really nice.

We have iMacs, Gateway and Dell all-in-one computers at my work. I think the iMac is by far the best, but the Dell is not too shabby. Desk space is also a concern at some buildings, so all-in-one computers also excel in that regard.

Are they meant to compete with a desktop? In my opinion, no not really, I would consider them in their own category. So, these computers have their purpose and their merit over classic desktop computers.

When I buy a house I will probably put an all-in-one computer in my kitchen for streaming, web browsing and other applications. That or stash a micro tower some where and mount a LCD on the wall.
 
tlarkin said:
They aren't over priced and you cannot build a PC spec for spec with the same hardware and have it be cheaper. Apple just uses the highest end parts. An IPS support LCD screen (standard in the iMac 27") is near or over $1,000 for the LCD itself.

As for all-in-one systems, they have their place. At my work, there are lots of older buildings. These buildings have limited number of power drops, and some are on a historical protection list (meaning we can't modify the building). Lots of all-in-one machine only take 1 power plug, which is really nice.

We have iMacs, Gateway and Dell all-in-one computers at my work. I think the iMac is by far the best, but the Dell is not too shabby. Desk space is also a concern at some buildings, so all-in-one computers also excel in that regard.

Are they meant to compete with a desktop? In my opinion, no not really, I would consider them in their own category. So, these computers have their purpose and their merit over classic desktop computers.

When I buy a house I will probably put an all-in-one computer in my kitchen for streaming, web browsing and other applications. That or stash a micro tower some where and mount a LCD on the wall.
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+1

In all honesty for the other all in one's, its just like buying a prebuild, more money for less. The only time i would even consider an all in one is if it was a very small deskspace, and even then i would purchase an apple product over a dell/hp/etc. With an all in one, you are sacrificing the ability to choose quality components, upgradeability, and from what ive heard from people with them is some of them tend to overheat quite alot.

For hard drives....most use a 3.5", im relatively sure the imacs even use 3.5" drives.
 
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2048Megabytes said:
So Laquer Head, were you able to get the Western Digital hard drive to fit inside the case of this All-In-One Computer, or is the hard drive you bought presently outside the case?
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The hard drive is a normal sized 3.5" SataII drive, exactly like we use in our desktop towers!!

Same connectors and has rubber mounts to limit vibration!

Mine has spots for 2 HDD's as mentioned..one inside which requires you to open the case, the other slides into a bay in the top, which is only remove of a small access panel and 3 tiny screws!..plug in,..put panel back on and you got 2 HDD's!!

:)
 
bomberboysk said:
+1

In all honesty for the other all in one's, its just like buying a prebuild, more money for less. The only time i would even consider an all in one is if it was a very small deskspace, and even then i would purchase an apple product over a dell/hp/etc. With an all in one, you are sacrificing the ability to choose quality components, upgradeability, and from what ive heard from people with them is some of them tend to overheat quite alot.

For hard drives....most use a 3.5", im relatively sure the imacs even use 3.5" drives.
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All in one computers do not use standard parts, they use custom engineered parts so it is really hard to say the quality of them. It also can vary from system to system very dynamically.

I agree that most of them are sub par systems but I have also seen some very high quality ones as well. The Sony ones are not bad. HP makes a business class all in one that is actually well built. The Dell iMac clone, is so so, but all the other ones are typically cheap machines under the hood.

iMacs use desktop drives, 3.5 inches.
 
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