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  • shmmy - Thursday, November 17, 2011 - link

    I sell these style computers at a major big box retailer and I just don't get it.
    This article is like a car review where you take a economy car and put it around a race track then complain that its too slow. (all be it an expensive economy car but still an economy car)
    Yes this spacific machine is a beast of an AIO, the store I work at has nothing like this almost all of them are sub 1k. The area I work in has an average income of 80-90k a year so its not that people are cheap. 90% of the people who buy these types of computers will never even open a real game.
    Maybe in a year or two when the power levels go down on all the new hardware these things will be better but now its a fun toy with a touch screen.

    A realistic test that can be done for this machine is to see how fast it gets to Facebook and porn because thats all that these types of computers are used for. :)
  • Dustin Sklavos - Thursday, November 17, 2011 - link

    I used to work retail, and more people play games than you think. Also, sometimes someone doesn't play games, then sees something they like and they want to play it too. And then their computer sucks for it. I have also seen this happen.

    Our testbed is standardized for a reason but beyond that, this computer is ill balanced and the hardware runs way, WAY too hot. I do have a less expensive Toshiba all-in-one I'm putting through its paces right now, but frankly I still have issues with touchscreen all-in-ones in general as I've mentioned. The technology is very much still in its teething stage.
  • orgy08 - Thursday, November 17, 2011 - link

    I tend to agree with you. My wife loves using all in one PCs and her ageing HP Touch-smart isn't holding up to well with the last World of Warcraft expansion. I'll probably end up building a slim/mini desktop instead of getting another All in one with low end graphics. Go ahead and sell to your target audience, but leave the option open to at least customize the PC online with faster components.
  • brybir - Thursday, November 17, 2011 - link

    I agree with you.

    Statements like "What we really need for 1080p AIO systems is at least GT 555M or (preferably) GTX 560M level hardware; we've seen such chips in 14" and 15" notebooks; would it really be that hard to stuff something faster into a significantly larger AIO system?"

    Sure, throw in a 560M and we can all pay an extra $50 or $100 dollars for the computer, or throw in a beefier processor for an extra $50, then why not add an IPS display for another $100....

    You can see where this is going with this. The person you talked with at HP also explained that same concept....they have a target market and a price range for that target market in order to be competitive. This device is NOT designed for the high end of the market or for those that want to play games and stuff.

    The author states in a post below that he knows that some people will buy this later and want to play games, or that the computer is not "balanced" because the specs are not all at least mid-level gaming PC specs, but that misses the point of market segmentation and making tradeoffs to reach a price point. The only value I find in those type of comments are when you can say "check out item A and B, both same type of device at the same or very similar price, but item B has much better overall specifications and capabilities" etc. Just making statements that the system is not balanced or that it does not cater to all possible uses is just not useful in a review like this.
  • JarredWalton - Thursday, November 17, 2011 - link

    Here's the fundamental problem with an all-in-one: you can't really upgrade most components. If you decide you don't like the display, want a faster GPU or CPU, or want more storage (e.g. SSD + HDD), in most cases your only recourse is to buy a new system. A laptop is portable and thus stuffing in higher end GPUs isn't always desirable; for an AIO, you really should get something a little more forward looking than a bare minimum GPU offering.

    If the GT 525M is enough, then you probably don't need the discrete GPU at all. Dell offers that as well, but have you looked at the pricing? It's a bit ridiculous for what you're getting, and it's time to go back to the drawing board. As we point out, the HP has a significantly better display, a better stand, a faster CPU, a better GPU, and it runs cooler; under load it even uses less power than this. For $150 more, the $1400 HP TouchSmart would be a far better buy.

    If Dell wants to make a cheap AIO, then make a cheap AIO; if they want something that can scale up to $1400, they need more than just an upgraded budget AIO to satisfy. That's one of the issues I have had with notebooks where the base model starts at $500. Right then you know it has cheap build quality and a crappy display, and if you upgrade to a high-end $1500 configuration you'll still have the lousy build quality. The cooling on the Inspiron 2320 shows that it's not capable of handling higher spec GPUs, and yet it can handle the i7-2600S. Doesn't that strike you as unbalanced?

    Given the size of an AIO relative to a notebook, it should be trivial to give the GPU its own dedicated cooling solution. Then instead of $300 to add 2GB RAM, double the HDD to 2TB, and adding the GT 525M, we could get a meaningful upgrade. Given the 2GB RAM upgrade is practically free, and even the HDD upgrade only costs $50 (and that's with hugely inflated HDD pricing right now), you're pretty much spending $250 for the GT 525M. And yet you're complaining that we suggest a faster GPU would be wise. Really, Dell should have tweaked the design and just shoved in a desktop GTX 550 Ti (or similar hardware). Instead, the aesthetic appearance (which I don't particularly care for to begin with) takes priority and we end up with a rather noisy under load system that runs too hot and underperforms.
  • JWade - Thursday, November 17, 2011 - link

    My wife has the AMD version of this, hers is very much upgradeable, better processor can be installed (she currently has a quad core AMD, had a base of a dual core), the video can be upgraded, it takes mxm type, just like alot of laptops do, ram can be upgrades as well as the hard drive. were these options available from Dell? well the processor upgrade was, but the rest no, but they still can be done.
  • JarredWalton - Thursday, November 17, 2011 - link

    Technically, yes, you can upgrade the CPU and you can swap out the HDD, but upgrading the GPU is a craps shoot at best. Upgrading MXM modules is not something to be done lightly. It looks like, based on the current GPU offerings, the Inspiron One 2320 is capable of supporting 35W TDP GPUs. Assuming the BIOS supports the GPU you want to put in (which isn't guaranteed), if you tried to put in a 75W TDP MXM GPU in place of the current GPU, you'd almost certainly overheat at best, and cause the system to fry itself at worst.
  • brybir - Thursday, November 17, 2011 - link

    But again, your comments fall back into my original statements. You can't upgrade the computer as easily, but not everyone wants or needs a computer that can be easily upgraded, if at all. They buy computers like the Dell in this article for other reasons...otherwise, if upgrading was a big priority, they would not have bought this Dell in the first place...

    I don't disagree with you on your points regarding GT525M vs. Intel graphics, cheap scaling etc of components, but again you come back to the system not being balanced, as if the GPU must match the capabilities of the CPU that it is paired with so that it can handle a wider range of usage scenarios. Dell engineered this thing with certain ideas of who it was being marketed to at a certain price point, and what would consumers of this device at this price point like to do with the computer. They base their decisions off this information. Sometimes they are right, sometimes they are wrong. But the idea that a system MUST be balanced among its various components at all times regardless of the targeted use profile seems to go against the entire idea of how PCs, and most consumer items, are designed and marketed.

    Finally, your last paragraph strikes me as somewhat....assumptive. You don't know whether it is actually trivial for Dell to re-engineer an entire product line or what the true costs of doing such are. There are hundreds of variables to consider when engaging in mass manufacturing that go well beyond "it should be easy" or "look...it would have been so easy to just do that" when it is never, ever, that simple. Further, you do not know what Dell pays for parts (or maybe you do, but I doubt it) what their internal goals were when developing this product line were, what margins they were shooting for etc.

    But I think you somewhat validate my point when you talk about the HP competitor. You stated that for $150 I can get more CPU power, a better GPU, a better display, a better stand, it runs both cooler and uses less power. If I were buying one of these, I would probably spend the extra $150 and buy the HP, and that is an entirely relevant criticism. But, what if I don't have the extra $150 to spend...do I just go without, or do I decide I would rather have at least what the Dell offers in my price range? Or what if I bought it because the only thing I wanted to do was type Word documents and stream Netflix. Is paying $150 extra to accomplish those tasks worth it? I get no benefit from the CPU or GPU upgrade in that case, so then the question is whether the display/power/heat issue worth $150 extra dollars, to which the answer will be different for everyone.

    My last point is that some of these articles have gotten a little bit preachy and seem to always compare things against "what could or should have been". I mean, the author actually states "What we really need for 1080p AIO systems is at least GT 555M or (preferably) GTX 560M level hardware". All I can say is that the AUTHOR thinks that we all need this, that we should all pay for it, and that no AIO should ever not have at least this level of capability." These sort of statements just strike me as nearly philosphical in nature. As noted above, it assumes we all need that hardware, which is not true, and then you provided a number of statements attempting to justify it by talking about all the hardware changes that COULD have been made and the redesign and reengineering to allow that to happen with a small cost increase. But that goes into the issue above about assumptions.

    Anyways, I do enjoy the articles generally, but sometimes I think you guys get a little to thick into the "everyone needs this" and then making huge assumptive jumps justifying why or how that could be achieved. That gets a bit tiring to read when it is article after article.
  • Death666Angel - Thursday, November 17, 2011 - link

    Your complaints would make sense, if we were talking about a company that offers only one configuration. But Dells business model is the configurability of all their products. It wouldn't hurt Joe "non gamer" Average if they at least offered better graphics, right?
  • JarredWalton - Thursday, November 17, 2011 - link

    Brybir, you're missing the point. For $600, the Inspiron 2320 makes a lot of sense -- though at that point I'm not sure the Celeron CPU would be fast enough. The reviewed configuration costs twice as much, but it's still a $600 chassis with a few performance upgrades, and the GPU upgrade is questionable at best. Perhaps a better way of stating it is that Dell should either go with the IGP (which they do on lower end configs) or put in a "real" GPU; the GT 525M is barely adequate for 1366x768 gaming, and if you're not gaming there's not a whole hell of a lot of need for the dGPU. Netflix streaming works fine without the GT 525M, and Word runs fine on an old Core 2 Duo with GMA 4500 graphics.

    My point about the overall design is that if you're going to make a system that is supposed to meet the needs of $600 AIO and $1500 AIO buyers, you need to consider BOTH markets and what they want. Apple takes good care of their $1200+ AIO customers in delivering a lot of performance and generally meaningful upgrades, and this Dell system doesn't at least match Apple. The base model $1200 iMac has a slightly smaller LCD, but it has better build quality, a much higher quality LCD, a faster GPU, a faster CPU, and more connectivity.

    Looking at the $1250 model (reviewed here), the Inspiron One falls short of the 21.5" iMac in every meaningful area. Drop to the $950 model and all you can really say is that it's cheaper, and at $600, it's a budget AIO and you get exactly what you pay for. None of the builds currently available are worth recommending in my opinion, or in Dustin's, and that's what we do here: we show benchmark results, we discuss the bigger picture, and we come to a conclusion on whether a product is worth buying or not. The Inspiron One isn't undesirable because of the GT 525M; it's a poor design because the low end model is underwhelming and the expensive model is even more so.
  • JarredWalton - Thursday, November 17, 2011 - link

    Just to help avoid confusion, I've added a bit to the offending paragraph. Here's the updated version, so if you still have complaints with this wording please let me know what you disagree with and why:

    "When I spoke to HP's representative about the meager graphics hardware in the TouchSmart, she suggested that it was really meant to be more of a family computer and thus didn't need particularly aggressive graphics hardware. That may be the case, but it undermines the necessity of a dedicated GPU to begin with. If the integrated HD 2000/3000 graphics are inadequate, you probably plan on doing at least some gaming, so you'll want more. The fact is that these mobile graphics chips were designed for notebooks with 768p screens, and at that resolution they're fine. On an all-in-one, though, they're much harder to justify and really speak to a fundamental problem with the all-in-one ecosystem: we need an in-between point for graphics hardware. What we really need for "upscale" 1080p AIO systems is at least GT 555M or (preferably) GTX 560M level hardware; we've seen such chips in 14" and 15" notebooks; would it really be that hard to stuff something faster into a significantly larger AIO system? The GT 525M upgrade from the base model Inspiron One 2320 ends up costing over $200, and for that price it just doesn't add enough performance."
  • tzhu07 - Thursday, November 17, 2011 - link

    This looks like the retarded younger brother of the iMac. Steve Jobs is fundamentally correct when he said that Dell makes boring beige boxes. Dell hasn't really done anything to prove him wrong.

    And God damnit those fucking stickers (lower right corner) keep appearing on Windows based machines. Stop, just stop already. I can't roll my eyes far back enough at this practice.
  • JarredWalton - Thursday, November 17, 2011 - link

    NOTE: Sigmatu, personal attacks on people is not something we like to see in our comments, and they have been deleted. tzhu07 has expressed an opinion that this looks like a crappy knock-off of the iMac, and that's certainly a valid opinion. Complaining about the stickers on systems is also valid. Your attacks suggesting he... whatever... are uncalled for. Any more of that and I'll pull out the banhammer.
  • sigmatau - Friday, November 18, 2011 - link

    I guess when I was told to "stfu" when I was talking about my horrible 3gs in another one of your articles, that was ok because I was talking the truth about Apple? gotcha.
  • JarredWalton - Friday, November 18, 2011 - link

    I don't read through every comment on every thread, but your attacks were personal and I saw them. If someone makes unwarranted attacks on you, feel free to drop me an email. If it's in the forums, though, don't talk to me -- talk to one of the forum moderators. The bottom line is your comments here were out of line and I saw them. Instead of pointing the finger at a vague "other post", accept that your posts were inflammatory and personal attacks that contributed nothing, and move on with better posts. It's what helps separate the AT readership from, say, the DT readership (though there's obviously overlap); we like to hold our comments to a higher standard. :-)
  • sigmatau - Friday, November 18, 2011 - link

    Fine, next time I will just say how fucking stupid Macs are and go on a diatribe about that since that seems to be fine by you. Fuck Macs! I guess that's the higher standard you are looking for?

    In all honesty, both of our comments should have been deleted. By you posting about this instead of a personal message, then you should not be surprised by a response.

    Anyways, I got it. I will not call people names, but apparently I can throw up all the profanity about products and that is fine. Sounds fairly hypocritical to me but whatever man.
  • Dustin Sklavos - Friday, November 18, 2011 - link

    Or you could just behave yourself in the first place.

    That is also an option.
  • sigmatau - Friday, November 18, 2011 - link

    Fuck Macs.
  • sigmatau - Friday, November 18, 2011 - link

    Macs are fucking grossly overpriced.

    I am expressing my opinion and "that's certainly a valid opinion".
  • niva - Thursday, November 17, 2011 - link

    Right on about the stickers, they're so hard to remove... I wish companies would stop doing that. Their main logo is obtrusive enough.

    Same about bloatware sold with the machines. I want a clean windows install on it.

    Agreed with the sentiment that this is a VERY cheap iMac. Hate Apple but props must be given in terms of design. Dell failed in execution of this AIO.
  • tipoo - Thursday, November 17, 2011 - link

    "more than adequate for even the most basic use."

    Doesn't really make sense.
  • JarredWalton - Thursday, November 17, 2011 - link

    No, not really; I've corrected the sentence.
  • Roland00Address - Thursday, November 17, 2011 - link

    i7 2630qm Recommended Customer Price $378
    i5 2400s Recommended Customer Price $184 - $195

    That is a difference of a $150 dollars, or in other words a lot of profit.
  • cknobman - Thursday, November 17, 2011 - link

    Dell has always made overpriced under-powered machines usually accompanied with godawful ugly designs.
  • melgross - Thursday, November 17, 2011 - link

    At least they're consistent.
  • melgross - Thursday, November 17, 2011 - link

    You really are intelligent. Great response! I suppose you are a Dell customer for life.
  • terraformer - Thursday, November 17, 2011 - link

    My father has been through 3 of these very machines, and each one has suffered extreme heat issues that fried the HD. Dell has been accommodating, but read any user reviews around the 'net and see a majority of owners experiencing the same problems. Dell rushed this out the door without addressing the clear cooling problem that these systems have. I still see ads for these all over the place.

    So I talked my father into buying my one-year old 27" iMac, and walked him through the differences in terms of UI. He is thrilled with it now, loves how fast it starts, how it can largely run itself (e.g., updates).

    And I bought a new iMac, spec'd it out pretty highly and, dear kind Sir above, it plays games beautifully and flawlessly. This avid FPS gamer (since Quake days) finds this machine plenty good enough for gaming. And I can run BF3 at ultra settings - turning off AA and a few other things - at native resolution at just above 30 fps. And that is fine with me.
  • dirtboy12 - Thursday, November 17, 2011 - link

    We bought many of these (around 300) for a school district and have seen at least 1/3 of them have their hard drives just die. One poor teacher has been through 4 hard drives on the same machine, but Dell keeps thinking that the solution is to put another one in. What was that quote about insanity?
  • dave_the_nerd - Thursday, November 17, 2011 - link

    Insanity is the mother of invention?
  • OwnedKThxBye - Saturday, November 19, 2011 - link

    Every time I read a review of a consumer/non-enthusiast laptop or all-in-one it seems like such a high value is placed on the screen quality. I sometimes wonder if people understand that these devices are used predominately by people who for the most part don't know what the word resolution means, let alone the differences between a TN and IPS panel. These machines are not aimed at the tech savvy power users, but the kind of people who tell me "everything on this screen looks too small. Is there a way I can make it larger?". A better quality screen with larger resolution isn't going to help them check Facebook and emails any better. In some cases high resolution can even seem like a disadvantage for those with bad eye sight. These kind of people are not going to choose to spend even $40 more on a better quality screen, however they might choose to spend the $40 if it made the screen larger. Customers have never told me they wish they could upgrade the screen on their all-in-one or laptop to a better quality one.

    This is a Dell Inspiron all-in-one that me and you are not going to go out and buy for numerous reasons. I'm reading this review on a 30" HP and have a 24" on either side of it. I will pay the extra for a better quality screen every time, but I know the kind of customers that make up the target audience for this device will not. If the customer chooses to love it and buy it or hate it and not buy it, either way not much if any of their decision will be based on the screen quality.

    Love the review Dustin
  • mbmack - Monday, November 21, 2011 - link

    I have enjoyed reading all of the posted comments regarding the Dell Inspiron 2320 and the HP All-In-One models. Clearly you guys know your computers! I am a stay-at-home mom of 4 kids and I am looking to purchase an all-in-one touchscreen computer. I think I have narrowed my choices down to either the Dell Inspiron One 2320 or the HP TouchSmart 610x, but am not quite certaint. I am a general everyday multi-purpose - email, web browsing, photo storage/editing, word processing, video watching - user who does not do any "real" gaming. My young boys like to play basic games though, and will no doubt venture into more hardcore games as they get older. I would like a system which has a strong & fast processor, has plenty of memory for data & photo storage, can handle semi-advanced gaming, and will live a good long life. I want to cover my needs fully, but without going overboard. I am also sensitive to energy efficiency & want a system with a good built-in fan to keep it from over heating, which I understand can be a problem with some AIO models. I am not a very tech-saavy consumer, so I would really appreciate any advice & guidance on the must-have system requirements to fit my bill. If there is a machine you particularly like or dislike, please let me know.

    Also, can anyone tell me the notable difference/advantage between an Intel Core processor & an AMD Athlon processor? Which is a better choice?

    Thank you so much for your guidance!
  • mbmack - Monday, November 21, 2011 - link

    I meant I am not certain.... not certaint!
  • heyyu - Thursday, January 26, 2012 - link

    I've had my 2320 for a few days now. I love everything about it, except for the screen quality. My wife's description of the problem is that it seems like it has a film of plastic over it, causing the screen to be quite dim. I just got back from Best Buy, hoping I got a lemon, but unfortunately, the floor model there had the exact same problems. Stupid TN panel.

    If you are still wanting to take the plunge, I'd suggest trying the Dell Outlet. I got a fully loaded one for around $700. Too bad the screen stinks.
  • jpa813 - Wednesday, March 14, 2012 - link

    is it possible to change the service tag in the bios. i changed the motherboard over the weekend and the service tag number doesnt match the one on the back of my machine.
  • andy6134 - Wednesday, July 4, 2012 - link

    Please help.. URGENT !! No GRAPHIC CARD ?

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