[ MUSIC ]
^M00:00:03
>> [Rich Brown:] Hi, I'm Rich Brown, senior editor for CNET.com. Today we're going to take a look at the Averatec D1133 all-in-one. So as you can see, this is kind of a neat little design for an all-in-one PC, and it has some interesting features. Unfortunately, overall it still is more or less a nettop, which means that the value proposition really isn't there, and kind of in general we're down on the whole category of nettops. So there's a little neck on the screen here that moves it up and down. It's an 18.4-inch display, and you can angle the screen pretty dramatically. And one thing that's actually kind of cool about this, if this was a touch screen -- it is not, but if it was -- this would be great for, say, virtual air hockey or some other kind of touch-based gaming situation or showing photos. It really would be pretty useful. And we hope with Windows 7 and built-in multi-touch capability with the new OS that, you know, designers are paying attention here. Otherwise the system really isn't the best value due to both its price performance and its features. It comes with a low wattage, dual-core Athlon 64 chip, and that actually might sound a little bit better than a typical Intel Atom C2 that we see in netbooks and in other nettop-like systems. And it, indeed it is: in our performance tests it performed about twice as fast. The problem is for about 450 bucks you can get a much faster budget PC. Throw in a monitor to that for about another hundred extra dollars or so, and all of a sudden, you've got a much faster system that's extendable. The screen is as big, if not bigger. Now we do get the convenience idea behind the self-contained, all-in-one PCs. The problem is this has very poor audio output, so if you want to watch a movie or something, you have to connect to external speakers. And of course you have a wired mouse, a wired keyboard. And in general, the convenience factor, sort of the nice, tidy organized little kiosk idea doesn't really live up to its expectations. Alternatively, a netbook has just the same capabilities for the most part, and it's portable, so you can bring it from room to room. You can see here on the front panel -- it's a little bit tough to see; there's this overhang -- but you've got your power button as well as power controls for the screen, volume and mute buttons as well. Now there's a DVD burner drive over here. That's obviously useful. And on the other side you get a pair of USB ports as well as a small smart card reader. Now Averatec has actually gone a little bit above and beyond for the ports on the back of the system. Now you have your standard USB and ethernet networking jacks. There's also wireless built into the system. But there's also an eSATA port for faster external data connections, as well as a DVI video output. Now we don't really see the benefit of the DVI output here. We don't think very many people would take this system with the idea of connecting it to a bigger screen, especially when, as we said, you can get such a faster computer in the form of a slim tower PC for about 450 bucks. So despite a few unique touches and the kind of interesting ideas that come from the flexible screen, we really can't recommend this Averatec system. It's a nice try, and we look forward to seeing what they do once multi-touch and Windows 7 become more widely available. So I'm Rich Brown; this is the Averatec D1133 all-in-one.
^M00:03:07
[ MUSIC ]
