A reader and I have been going back and forth on HP's claim that its new Z1 is the world's only 27" all-in-one, and you can read about our email-conversation in next week's upFront.eZine. He and I did a bit of digging to see if HP's claim is true, and it is when you include all three of HP's qualifiers. The full description from HP is:
Introducing the HP Z1, the world's first:
(a) all-in-one workstation
(b) with a 27" (diagonal) display
(c) that snaps open to let you swap out parts and make upgrades.
Of course, Apple has its iMac (a) all-in-one workstation with (b) a 27" (diagonal) display. But it doesn't snap open, and Apple is proud of that:
While you’ll find a collection of [ten] ports on the back of iMac, you won’t find much else. A seamless, precision-forged enclosure makes the back one continuous aluminum surface. And there's only one cord: the power cord.
And there the logic fails. Since you cannot open the back of the iMac to swap in next year's better components, you have to add features through the one FireWire 800, four USB 2 [not v3], two Thunderbolt, one ethernet, and two audio ports. I'd count that as eleven wires, not one.
Not that I am a fan of HP, but sealing the back shut on the iMac means that you are locked out of upgrades that can't be done through ports, such as to add more RAM, upgrade the graphics board, or swap out for a bigger power supply.
I recall years ago at a COFES event where HP excitedly showed me their no-tools workstation: big plastic knobs, levers, and so on. I see some of it made it to their consumer models, but I wonder why they never went whole-hog. In any case, here is what can be swapped with no tools:
- Power Supply
- Graphics Card
- Hard Drives
- Optical Drive
- System Cooling Blower
- Memory [never need tools for RAM cards]
(Tools may be required for other components.)
We'll see if Dell can compete. They're having a hush-hush media event Friday, and I will be there. My guess: an all-in-one (that doesn't look like their current ones, see below) that runs the new Ivy Bridge CPU/GPU from Intel. Or as HP puts it, "the power without the tower."
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