However, Sony's new range is good-looking enough to make a splash in a stylish
reception or boardroom.
Like Apple's iMac, it's an all-in-one solution so the desk footprint is
reduced. The hardware is built into the back of the screen which, at 24
inches, is high-end enough to qualify as Full High Definition (HD). And
since there's a TV tuner built in too, with a TV aerial, you can watch the
news as it breaks. Or that international football match thoughtlessly timed
to coincide with office hours. If you have an HD set-top box such as
Freesat, you can watch HD TV thanks to an HDMI input – something hard to
find on computers. The icing on the HD cake is a built-in Blu-ray drive.
So it looks good, but you're here to work. Does it cut the mustard
business-wise? Well, that Blu-ray drive is writable (also still rare), so
you can store up to 50GB of data on each disc. So it's an ideal way of
archiving data which can be stored elsewhere, safely and conveniently – a
burglar is less interested in DVD-sized discs. The hard drive is pretty big,
too, at 500GB. There's a decent 3GHz Intel Core Duo processor and plenty of
operating memory (4GB) so even the power-gluttonous Windows Vista can move
at speed.
If your work involves photo- or video-editing, the hardware is up to this and
bundled software makes it easy to burn video to disc.
None of this would mean a thing if it cost too much, but under £1,200 before
VAT is a reasonably keen price – you're not paying through the nose. There's
a smaller-screen (20-inch) LN1M model which has Blu-Ray playback but not
recording for £850 plus VAT. Not to mention a 25.5-inch model in black for
£1,700 plus VAT.
But you don't want to be ostentatious, even in the boardroom, now do you?
From : http://www.telegraph.co.uk/
