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HP Touchsmart IQ515uk
by mblain1
At the time of it's purchase around 3 years ago we saw this desktop in Costco for £800 half price. We tried to check reviews etc but none were found. Now I realise why. This computer can be fast and flowing one minute, but the next, it could be utter chaos with the graphics card producing multicoloured lines on the screen or a message ... telling us that the hard drive is pretty much busted.
The thing I noticed at the age of 15 was "OH WOW TOUCHSCREEN". I regret the day I begged my parents to buy the computer for our family. The touchscreen must add on around £200 to the total since the specifications of the PC are around an average £500-£700 computer. We now realise that this touchscreen is completely useless, I'm not saying it doesn't work well because it does! It's just when you have a mouse what is the point of it.
The graphics card is fairly decent, able to use up to Direct X 10, and nVidia's 3D enhancements. However when the processor is only an Intel Core Duo at 2.0 GHz this is rendered pretty much useless when playing games.
It will play Skyrim at around 30FPS low-medium settings, Stalker Call of Pripyat at around 40FPS at medium settings and Modern Warfare 2 at around 20-30FPS at high settings.
It has been brought to my attention that 3 years does mean it's lasted a decent amount of time, however we're close to replacing our graphics card and have replaced our hard drive twice now. It could be something to do with how we use the computer constantly and is pretty much on 20 hours a day. Another problem however is how it's extremely difficult to find any replacements for this computer, since the motherboard is fairly small because it is classed as a laptop (in terms of specifications).
I wouldn't recommend buying one unless it's fairly cheap or you're definitely going to use the touchscreen feature, however it has been very useful to the family as a fast computer for word processing, browsing and gaming.
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HP Touchsmart 310-1220uk
by loconnor88
I bought this a few months ago and I'm really pleased with it. It's a very nicely designed computer with everything in and around the screen. There's no extra tower and the only separate parts are the mouse and the keyboard. So this is a great space saver, the actual computer takes up about 1/5th of my desk. The screen is very clear and ... a good size. There are speakers built-in below the screen and a camera built-in above it. USB ports are in the back and the cd/dvd player is in the side. It's very compact and a nice change to my old computer which had separate speakers and a tower.
The standout feature is the touch screen, which to be honest sounds more exciting than it actually is. It's a feature that's always on and you can perform all actions that you would with a mouse and the keyboard simply by pressing or dragging across the screen. The computer brings up a different icon (a star) to the mouse (an arrow). It's very easy to switch back and forth between the two. I found it really easy to figure out too, it's just like using a mouse. However, I don't really use this feature much because as simple as I find it, I prefer using the mouse. There is a fun screensave of fish in a pond which responds to the touch screen e.g. you can move the water. But apart from that, it's just a cool feature which I don't use.
The separate mouse and keyboard are both wireless. They are both in black and match the computer. They both have batteries and despite having the computer a few months, I haven't had to change the batteries yet. This is impressive because I use the computer a lot. The keyboard is very thin, light and about average size. The mouse is a bit smaller than a normal mouse I would say but not so much that it's a problem.
I've found that the computer runs very smoothly and quickly. There's been no problems with it so far. It has Windows 7 which I've found to be nicely set up and very simple to use. In terms of programs, I had to buy microsoft office (word, powerpoint etc) but it comes with internet explorer and the usual types of programs (games etc). There's a nice selection of backgrounds and screensavers, and the option to run more than one user account. It runs DVDs well and the films look brilliant on the screen. The sound is good too but bearing in mind it only has the one large speaker built-in across the bottom of the screen. Of course surround sound would be better or lots of separate speakers but for what it has, the sound is clear and loud. I've used Skype on this computer and found it works very well. The quality of the video was good and so was the audio. There's a lot of space on it for storing files and I've only used about 10% of the 911 GB so far on the hard drive.
Overall, this is an excellent computer which looks great, doesn't take up too much space, has lots of storage, easy to use, fast and has good video and audio. I'd say for the quality of the computer it's good value for money.
I would say this is a good computer for any sort of student work (e.g. uni), watching movies, listening to music, internet use and general computer use.
Use- 5/5.
Design- 5/5.
Value for money-5/5.
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Apple iMac MC309B/A
by Pilotgavw
After being a self-proclaimed "fan" of the iPhone and iPad, and when my windows based laptop finally gave up on me, having been so impressed with my previous apple products, I chose my next computer to be the new 21.5" Apple iMac.
****Design****
The iMac is a truly beautiful machine to look at, a ... single unit with only one cable, the power cord, cased in an all aluminium shell with a gloss black border surround of the screen. It comes with the bluetooth connected wireless keyboard and magic mouse, however, I bought the apple trackpad to replace the mouse as it offers more flexibility when using the operating system by making the most of the multi-touch gestures available.
****Specification****
The specifications offered were not as good as some of the desktop machines available on the market, but this is by no means a slouch. The 2.5 GHz intel i5 quad core processor is a powerful beast, I still am yet to find a piece of software that prevents me from running it at maximum resolution setting, this is of course helped by the 4 GB of ram as standard which is upgradable to 16 GB if you so wish. The Hard-drive is offered as 500GB or 1TB versions for the 21.5" model when bought 'out-of-the-box' from an apple store or other retailer, however, further changes to these specifications can be made if purchased from apples on-line retail store (at a price of course). The system comes with a built in 'FaceTime' camera for video calling, etc. and has bluetooth and wifi capability. As well as the standard re-writtable DVD slot, this new model also has the new thunderbolt socket as well as 4xUSB, a firewire and ethernet attachments. Thunderbolt is apples new connection designed for very high speed data transfer, at the moment limited to plugging in an external display but could be used for external hard-drives, etc in the future.
****Software****
The built-in software run on the operating system Mac OS X Lion, which is apples new and shiny platform. Having previously only used Windows machines I was a little apprehensive about making the move to Mac OS, worrying about finding the transition fairly difficult, and I must admit, it did take me a certain amount of time...about 1 day. The user interface is unbelievably simple to use and I know everyone seems to say this about Macs, but they really do "just work", theres never any messing around and fiddling to try and get applications to work properly, which I seemed to spend half my life doing on Windows. For example, I bought a new HP printer towards the end of my previous Windows laptops life and after re-installing drivers, several attempts of "switching it off and back on" it never really worked properly, always dropping off-line. After buying my iMac, I switched it on, and bobs your uncle, worked straight away, no drivers, no fiddling, in fact I didn't quite believe it could be that easy, but it was...everything is just that easy.
Other software that comes with the mac are the iLife suite, including iPhoto, iMovie, and Garage-band. It also has a native calendar and mail app, and a few more. The iMac now has its own app store, allowing you to access thousands of other software titles and download directly to you iMac in a few clicks. One really great feature that I love about mac OS X Lion is the multiple desktop feature, using a three-finger swipe on the multi-touch trackpad, you can switch between a full-screen view of your calendar, emails, PDF documents, anything you want. A very useful tool for me.
****Price****
The price is probably one of the big negatives about this device, it is expensive, but this also ensures that you get a quality product and you do "get what you pay for". This is certainly true in this case. The base model is £999 and the higher spec being £1249. There are even 27" display options available for a higher price.
****Recommendation****
The iMac is pricey, but in my opinion, worth it. As a family computer it is ideal, it offers very user-friendly interfaces and with very few viruses on the mac, a safe computer experience. If you are a hard-core gamer, this isn't the machine for you, but for a casual user or someone working from home, this is ideal. Believe me, once you go Mac, you'll never go back!
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