desktops

We know that Velocity Micro has been cooking up this CineMagix Grand Theater long before CES. We remember speaking to one of its product managers about his very vague home theater PC plans many months ago over the course of a previous review. The result is not dissimilar to the Sony VAIO XLR3 Digital Living System, which also made its debut at CES, except that Velocity Micro's system will start about $1,000 cheaper.

Core specs will include a fast Intel Core 2 Duo 6700 processor; aggressive, sound-sensitive cooling; and standard-def or Blu-ray optical at launch. The date is … Read more

We've already reviewed HP's new, Vista-equipped TouchSmart PC, announced here at CES 2007, but what we didn't talk much about was the new custom support application that HP sent with it, and which will come in all new HP laptops and desktops. We sat down with HP this morning to talk about it, and we came away more than a little impressed.

Total Care Advisor is an HP-made suite of support tools designed to help you stay proactive in maintaining the health of your HP system. The software clearly breaks down the various areas of your system … Read more

The very first CES-related thing we saw when we got to Vegas was a banner advertising Windows Vista at Las Vegas International. Since then, it's been pretty much nonstop. Vista is everywhere at the show. It's dominated the conversations we've had with nearly every major desktop, laptop, peripheral, and software vendor we've met with.

The ubiquity of Vista at CES mirrors how it's going to affect the PC market. Mass adoption won't happen right away, but as you'll find Windows XP on the majority of computers today, in a few years we anticipate … Read more

We first saw Alienware's Hangar 18 HTPC at Digital Life in October 2006. Then it was called the A Series, and, as now, it was built on an AMD Live!-certified platform (the meaning of which we're still fuzzy on). The only real news at CES is it has a new name, the Hangar 18, and Alienware is pegging the release date sometime in Q2 2007. Specs remain subject to change, but figure that it will have a dual-core Athlon 64 X2 chip in it. You can also make out a slot-loading optical drive bay on the front … Read more

We're not exactly sure what the whole story is with ATI's newly announced TV Wonder Digital Cable Tuner. We do know that it's a digital cable TV tuner and that it will support the PC CableCard standard, bringing digital cable, analog cable, and over-the-air high-definition content to your Windows Vista-equipped laptop or desktop. It sounds like it will come only bundled with new PCs (starting January 30), which makes sense, given that we learned last year that you won't be able to build your own CableCard PC from scratch.

What we don't get is how … Read more

Touch-screen capability is a standard feature in Windows Vista Home Premium, and HP has put it to great use in its new $1,799 TouchSmart PC IQ770, announced here today at CES 2007. We've actually been playing with it for a few days and have already written a full review of the TouchSmart PC IQ 770.

We'll let the review do most of the talking, but we'll say now that, aside from many of the features you'd expect in a midrange all-in-one PC system (DVD burner, Wi-Fi, wireless mouse and keyboard), HP also includes an application … Read more

It's not exactly quad-core for the masses, but Intel this morning released a lower-end, non-Extreme, quad-core desktop CPU. The Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 joins the Core 2 Extreme QX6700, Intel's first quad-core desktop chip, which it released last November. The new quad-core part is very similar to the preceding Extreme chip. it's priced just $150 less, at $851. And like the Extreme QX6700, the Q6600 features 8MB of L2 cache and operates on a 1066MHz front-side bus. The Q6600 is clocked at 2.4GHz compared with the QX6700's 2.66GHz clock speed. The biggest difference … Read more

We're sure Sony's VAIO XL3 Digital Living Room System will not be the last living room PC we hear of at the show with a laundry list of new features, but it might be the most comprehensive from a major PC vendor. A Blu-ray DVD burner, CableCard support for digital cable reception, and Windows Vista Home Premium are the highlights. By incorporating all of these new features into a system right away, Sony shows that, if it has given up on the standard desktop PC, it remains serious about the living room computer.

An Intel Core 2 Duo … Read more

It's hard to say whether Sony intends its just-announced VAIO RM HD Video Editing system as a professional-level workstation or not. Its $3,500 price tag, its Blu-ray burner, and the fact that it comes with Adobe Premiere Pro 2.0 say, "yes," but its single dual-core processor, the lack of a FireWire 800 port, and the use of the word "videophile" in the product's press release say otherwise. Apple's Mac Pro crosses over between the professional and the consumer worlds well enough, so perhaps it's easiest to consider the VAIO RM … Read more