Dell Inspiron One 2305 (Blu-ray)

 
The Dell Inspiron One 2305 (Blu-ray) ($1,099 direct) is an all-in-one desktop PC with a touch screen, Blu-ray, and competitive performance numbers. While it's not going to usurp the HP TouchSmart 310 ($1,159 direct, 4 stars) of its Editors' Choice, the Dell Inspiron One is certainly a viable alternative—especially if you're looking for a primary media-center PC.
Design & Features
The Inspiron One (Blu-ray) has a 23-inch widescreen with a 1,920 by 1,080 resolution, which means full 1,080p HD viewing. Its frame is made of black plastic that was designed to resemble brushed wood. The rest of the chassis is silver-colored, except for the transparent stand. The desktop is raised high enough that there is a gap to slide the wireless keyboard underneath—a welcome feature when in want of desk space.

On the side of the Inspiron One (Blu-ray) are a few easy-access ports and buttons, including volume and brightness controls, 2 USB 2.0 ports, an SD card slot, Blu-ray player, and audio-in and -out. In the back are 4 more USB 2.0 ports, HDMI, VGA, composite video, S/P DIF, TV Tuner, and Ethernet. It would have been nice to have seen some future-forward external expansion ports like eSATA or USB 3.0. But USB 2.0 will suffice for most of your external hard drive needs—though the data transfer speeds will not be as fast. The Inspiron One does come with 1TB of space that should be able to contain all your multimedia files.
The touch interface that comes with the Inspiron One (Blu-ray) is the "Dell Stage," and while I enjoyed some of the added games and apps, I felt like it was a completely separate experience. The Dell Stage is essentially a dock bar that sits on the Windows 7 desktop and you can launch touch apps from there. In comparison, the HP TouchSmart 310 has a whole interface dedicated to touch that you can launch on top of Windows 7. I would have liked to see something more advance than a toolbar with no app store, but maybe version 2.0 will have more to offer.

Specifications

Type

Mainstream, All-in-one, Digital Entertainment System

Processor Family

AMD Athlon II X4

RAM

8 GB

Storage Capacity (as Tested)

1000 GB

Graphics Card

ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5470

Primary Optical Drive

Blu-Ray Disc

Operating System

Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium

More

Performance
The Dell Inspiron One (Blu-ray) comes outfitted with a 2.4GHz AMD Athlon II X4610e processor, 8GB of DDR3 RAM, and an ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5470 graphics chipset. With these components, the Inspiron One (Blu-ray) scored well on our PCMark Vantage test (5,354), which measures overall computing performance. Compared with the HP 310 that sports a slightly faster 2.5GHz Athlon II X4 615e processor, it scored 656 points less than the Inspiron One (Blu-ray). The HP310, however, bested the Inspiron One (Blu-ray) by mere seconds in our Handbrake video encoding test (2:56 HP, 3:03 Dell), Cinebench R11.5 (2.82, 2.7), and Photoshop CS5 (6:42, 6:56).
The Inspiron One (Blu-ray) is no 3D powerhouse, but it faired well in our 3DMark Vantage test (6,572). However, it ran Lost Planet 2 at a slideshow pace of 11 frames per second (fps) on Middle quality and it couldn't even run our Crysis test. Your gaming experience is probably going to be limited to games like Starcraft II, World of Warcraft, and Farmville.
The Dell Inspiron One 2305 (Blu-ray) has all the performance to make it a decent all-in-one desktop, but a touch PC must have the added features to make the touch-functionality worthwhile. As it stands the HP TouchSmart 310 has the better applications coupled with its multi-touch screen.
BENCHMARK TEST RESULTS
Check out the test scores for the Dell Inspiron One 2305 (Blu-ray)
COMPARISON TABLE
Compare the Dell Inspiron One 2305 (Blu-ray) with several other desktops side by side.

Source:PcMag

How to Buy a Business Printer

Of all the ways you can slice and dice printers into categories, the most significant distinction is between printers meant for the home and those meant for the office. Here are the key questions to ask as they apply to office printers.
Do you need a single-function printer or an multifunction printer (MFP)?
Consider whether you'd rather have separate devices for faxing, copying, scanning, and printing versus a single machine that does it all. At a minimum, an MFP combines a printer and scanner and works as a copier as well. For an office MFP, you'll probably want one that also works as a standalone fax machine. Advantages of MFPs include cost and space savings, as well as integration of some features.
On the other hand, single-function printers are optimized for certain tasks that your business may require. Laser printers for general office use are usually faster than comparably priced MFPs. Photo and graphic arts studios will certainly want a high-end photo printer, and probably a single-function scanner as well. Road warriors may also want to get a portable scanner, for scanning business cards or receipts while away from the office. Of course, buying a specialized device doesn't preclude you from getting an MFP as well.
If you decide you want an MFP, you might also want to look for an e-mail feature, which is potentially more useful than faxing. Most often, that means the AIO will launch an e-mail message on your PC and attach a scanned document. Some AIOs can e-mail scanned documents directly, however, and a few offer both choices.
Finally, if you are getting an MFP, you should demand an automatic document feeder (ADF) so that you can fax, copy, scan, or e-mail multipage documents with minimal work. ADFs also generally handle legal-size pages, even if the flatbed is limited to letter size.
Do you really need color?
If you never print anything but letters and monochrome documents, there's no reason to spend money on color. When considering whether you need color, though, keep in mind that many color lasers can print at high-enough quality to let you produce your own advertising handouts and trifold brochures. If you tend to print only a few hundred copies of this sort of output at a time, doing it yourself can save substantial amounts of money compared with printing small quantities at your local print shop.
How big a printer are you comfortable with?
Just because something is called a desktop printer doesn't mean it's small enough that you'd want it on your desk. Even a printer with a small footprint can be tall enough for you to feel as if it's towering over you. Be sure to check out the size.
How are you going to connect?
Most printers designed for the office include both USB and Ethernet ports, but you may prefer a wireless connection, particularly in a home office. Keep in mind, though, that if you have a wireless access point on your network, you can print wirelessly from your computer to any printer on that network, whether the printer itself offers a wireless connection or not.
What level of output quality do you need?
Printers vary significantly in output quality. Check out text, graphics, and photos separately, since high quality for one kind of output doesn't necessarily mean high quality for the others.
For office use, you probably want the kind of crisp, clean edges for text and line graphics that you can only get from a laser printer. But consider also whether you need graphics and photos that are merely good enough for internal business use, or whether you need high-enough quality to print your own marketing materials.
How much speed do you need?
If almost everything you print is one or two pages, you probably don't need a fast printer. But if you print a lot of longer documents, speed is more important. In that case, be sure you're judging speed by actual throughput. Most importantly, note that you can't compare claimed speeds for inkjets with claimed speeds for lasers. As a rule, laser printers will be close to their claimed speeds for text documents, which don't need much processing time. Inkjets often claim faster speeds than more expensive lasers, but don't live up to the claims.
How much do you print?
Figure out how much you print by how often you buy paper and in what amounts. Then pick a printer designed to print at least that much.
Unfortunately, this isn't as simple as it could be. Contrary to what most people think, a printer's maximum monthly duty cycle isn't the maximum you should be printing. It's the maximum you can print without damaging the printer. Some manufacturers state a recommended maximum in addition to a maximum duty cycle. For those that don't, you can follow the (very rough) rule of thumb of picking a printer whose maximum duty cycle is at least three times the number of pages you print per month.
Also consider input capacity. The rule of thumb here is to pick a printer with enough capacity to let you add paper no more than once a week.
There are other paper-handling issues, too: Check the minimum and maximum paper size. And if you need to print on both sides even occasionally, make sure the printer has an automatic duplexer. (Many small-business printers, even light-duty models, now include one as a standard feature.) Keep in mind, too, that the more people are in your office, the more you may benefit from things like a stacker or sorter, to keep the print jobs separate from each other. Also consider whether you can benefit from a finisher to handle things like stapling and hole punching.
How much does it cost?
Finally, be sure to check out the running cost and total cost of ownership. Most vendors will tell you the cost per page. To get the total cost of ownership, multiply the cost per page by the number of pages you print per year, then multiply that by the number of years you expect to own the printer, and add the initial cost of the printer. Compare these totals for any printers you're considering, and you may well find that you'll save money in the long run by buying the more expensive printer. Once you're armed with that information, you're ready to pick the best choice for your office.

Source:PcMag

Super Meat Boy patched on XBLA, new levels to follow

If you envision Microsoft's nebulous certification process as a sadistic Super Meat Boy level -- some lava pits here, a few saw blades everywhere -- you may understand why a tiny weakling of a file, less than 1MB in size, spent over 3 months attempting to survive the gauntlet unscathed. Yes, the Super Meat Boy patch, which should cover up all of the squishy protagonist's oozing faults (including that auto-save glitch), is now available on Xbox Live Arcade. Just launch the game to download it automatically.

With the XBLA version corrected, Team Meat can continue pushing new content to "Teh Internets," the in-game hub that hosts free, downloadable levels. Indie developer Gaijin Games is constructing a level pack for Commander Video, and Michael "Kayin" O'Reilly -- indefensibly evil creator of I Wanna Be The Guy -- is making some Kid-unfriendly levels. Team Meat's Edmund McMillen says that a pack remixing Super Meat Boy's best bits is also on the way. "We also have a few other devs lined up but we want to space level updates out a bit," he tells us.

The game's level editor and level portal will be live on Steam "as soon as possible," he adds, and "we will also have a few cool bits of info about the future of SMB around that time as well." So ... that's a lot of incoming levels. When you've conquered all of them, it'll be time to concern yourself with a different kind of certification -- that of your inevitable insanity.
 Source: Team Meat (Twitter)

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