Is touch the way of the future? Partially. I don’t think that the old fashioned keyboard and mouse is going to go anywhere soon, but touch-screens offer an alternative way to interact with our computers that has unique advantages and disadvantages. I wouldn’t want to type a term paper on a touch-screen virtual keyboard, but I would rather edit graphics with an accurate multi-touch display.

Most touch-screen devices are tablets or convertible tablets, but there are some exceptions that are notable. These touch-screen PCs are fully functioning and quite powerful desktops that require little sacrifice from users. But which ones are the best? Let’s find out.

HP TouchSmart 610

HP has been a leader in touch-screen desktop PCs for some time. Their TouchSmart series of all-in-ones has stood out of the crowd based one two strengths. One is the quality of the touchscreen, had traditionally been available at a high resolution and with very accurate touch input. The other is the built-in software that ships with the TouchSmart line, which is designed to take advantage of touch inputs.

The new TouchSmart 610 continues these strengths and it adds one unique and interesting feature; a stand that make it possible to move the all-in-one from an upright position to a reclined, 60 degree position. Reclining the all-in-one makes it easier to you the touch-screen while standing, which happens more often than you’d think with this kind of device.

Awesome stand aside, the TouchSmart 610 is otherwise a very solid all-in-one. It offers Intel processors, a 23″ display with 1080p resolution, and a starting price of just $899.

ASUS Eee Top ET2010AGT

If you’re looking for an inexpensive but capable all-in-one with a multi-touch touch-screen display, the ASUS Eee Top is waiting for you. A relatively small desktop, the Eee Top’s display is limited to 20 inches. It still manages a display resolution of 1600×900, however, which is more than sufficient for most users. The fact that the touch-screen is indeed multi-touch capable and quite accurate is a boon.

Inside the Eee Top ET2010 you’ll find a Athlon dual-core processor and Radeon 5470 graphics. While the dual-core Athlons are trailing the Intel options badly these days, the graphics are far superior to what you’ll find in an Intel computer that doesn’t add its own discrete graphics card.

The pricing is also an advantage. The ASUS Eee Top ET2010AGT is usually sold for somewhere between $650 and $700. That’s a great entry-level price. If you’re on a budget, you can’t go wrong with an Eee Top.

Lenovo Ideacentre A700

Although best know for its laptops, Lenovo has a substantial desktop presence that it is aggressively expanding.  It expansion has happened thanks to the introduction of new products that are cutting edge but consumer focused – and the A700 is one such product.

This touch-screen PC has a 23″ multi-touch display with 1080p resolution, the same as the more recently announced HP TouchSmart 610. However, the IdeaCentre A700 ships with more powerful hardware in its standard configuration; a Core i5 dual-core processor powers this large all-in-one, giving it the chops to hang with any competitor. It even has a TV tuner. Considering the A700′s price of just over $900 the Ideacentre looks like a performance bargain.

Well, that’s not the whole story. The A700 is fast, but it lacks the special reclining stand of the TouchSmart 610, and the software suite is inferior. The A700 is really better suited to use as a HDTV, while the TouchSmart 610 is better in a public area where it will often be used by people both standing and sitting.

I’ve been testing the Lenovo Q110 for a little over a week now. It is a pretty slick looking unit, despite being matte on one side and gloss on the other rather than completely gloss as the initial press photos would leave one to believe. I’ve tried out the mounting bracket for monitor stands and by god, does it work well, and the unit is actually made so that it works well. We’ve been hearing for, oh, ages that we’d have netbooks that fit directly onto the back of monitors, but this is the first one I’ve seen that does it would looking like a complete hack job.

Something else which has jumped out at me is the lack of bloatware on this unit. It is so minimal that I’m frankly wondering if perhaps the full retail versions are going to be different. There is very, very little on the Lenovo Q110 besides what you absolutely need. No fancy power scheme software, no Ultra-Q Extreme One Touch Green Overclock, and other such shenanigans. Even my Samsung NC10, which isn’t known for having a lot of bloat, seems like a fat man in comparison. This seems to have paid off in boot times, as the Lenovo Q110 is booting up just as quickly as my personal desktop PC – which is equipped with an SSD. The Lenovo Q110 has a mechanical drive, and a slow one, so the fact it is nearly as quick impressive.

I must say, however, that I’ve been so far disappointing by what Ion can do. Ion has been billed as basically the netbook/nettop equivalent of the second coming of Christ. It is supposed to re-energize the segment by allowing netbooks and nettops to accomplish far more then they were once able to, particularly in the realm of HD video and gaming. That, readers, is turning out to be pretty fanciful thinking. The Lenovo Q110 has no optical drive, remember, so I’m running video through the usual online sources like Youtube, ABC.COM, and iTunes. The results have been a buffet of stuttering and skipping, and my attempts at 3D gaming have been similar.

The problem is, alas, the Atom processor. I’m not entirely surprised, because ages ago several hardware sites ran previews of the Ion chipset and found it was largely held back by the Atom. Many of my video and gaming tests maxed out the Atom immediately.  The other part of the problem is that so many forms of media don’t properly support 3D acceleration. Youtube is the case in point. Until Flash properly accelerates video, which apparently will happen soon, anything with a single-core Atom is going to struggle with Youtube. Or Hulu. Or any number of other flash based video sites.

This aside, I’m pretty impressed with the Q110. Its expensive for a nettop without an integrated monitor, but its also a higher class of product. The 2GB of RAM is particularly good to have.

Look for the full review coming up in one or two weeks on Bright Hub. I will post a link to that review here as well.

I just received a Lenovo Q110 into the Smidgen PC, uh, lab yesterday.The Lenovo Q110 is the new nettop from Lenovo, providing competition for the ASUS Eee Box and Acer AspireRevo. My unit arrived with a Intel Atom 230 processor, a 250GB Hard Drive, 1GB of memory, Ion graphics, and Windows Vista with the obligatory Windows 7 upgrade flyer.

So, in the great traditional of receiving cool new gadgets, here are the photos of my unboxing.

The box is fairly small, and is made up in a family-friendly fashion as you’d expect from a little inexpensivse nettop.

When you open it up, you’re given this big stop sign. Inside of the plastic is also the manual, a summary of the system’s specifications, warranty information, and a few other assorted papers.

The Q110 nettop itself is in the top of the box, all wrapped up and by itself.

Underneath are the accessories, of which there are four. It includes a power cord, a power supply, a stand which acts like a foot for mounting the Q110 in an upright position and also a metal bracket which can be used to attach the Q110 to the back of a monitor.

Here is an up-close shot of the Lenovo Q110. I do want to note something here. I forgot to take a photo of it, but only one side of the Q110 is glossy. The other side is matte black. It is sort of an odd construction because it means the Q110 looks incredibly sexy from one side and really boring from the other.

Whenever I get a new nettop in, I just can’t believe how small these things are. Here is a photo of it on top of my Samsung NC10 for comparison. Pretty tiny, huh? According to my measurements the unit is about 6 and 3/4 inches tall, 6 inches deep, and 1 inch thick.

That’s it for now. I will be reviewing this unit fully to see just how good it is. I’m going to take a real close look at it as an HTPC to see if Nvidia Ion + Atom is enough to watch video at 1080p.

Once upon a time even basic users needed to purchase the latest and greatest computer in order to keep up to speed with the pace of technology. But alas, those days history, part of an era where hackers were renegades and AMD seemed to have a chance against Intel. Netbooks proved that you don’t need a top-class PC to perform daily tasks, and that reasoning has moved into the desktop space as well. Hence we have the nettop, a cute little computer which takes up no more space than a hardcover book but lets you surf the internet, send emails, and watch someone fall of a bike on Youtube. Of course, new markets are competitive. There is a ton of nettops out there, so figuring out which nettop is best for your needs isn’t simple. This guide will help clear up the muddled waters so you can figure out which nettop to buy.

Performance – Adequate, or More Than Adequate?

Less is more has been the battlecry of the netbook phenomena, and it has reverberated through nettops as well. Indeed, the very first nettops, such as the Asus Eee Box and the MSI Wind Nettop (which are still some of the best nettops available) were basically direct ports of netbook technology into a nettop form. They used Atom processors, had 1GB of RAM, and small, slow hard drives. These first nettops offered performance which was perfectly adequate for most users, and had some very interesting features besides, such as integrated wireless.

However, nettops are unlike netbooks in that they do not benefit from the happy side-effect of low performance computing – great battery life. The low power draw of an Atom may

ASUS Eee Box

interest you if you’re seriously into composting, but most buyers are not going to be concerned if their desktop PC consumes thirty watts of power rather than fifty. As such, there is now a full range of different nettops available offering a many different performance options.

The first major performance option is the processor in the nettop. The low end continues to be dominated by single-cord Atom processors, usually of the 1.6Ghz N270 variety. The older Asus Eee Box and MSI Wind Nettop continue to be leaders in this category. Both are capable of basic computing tasks. They’re quiet, they’re power efficient, and they’re small. They’re mostly sold with Windows XP or Linux, which is fine considering their performance. The only really snag on these products is video performance, which is very poor. Higher performance nettops also use Atom processors, but use the dual-core Atom N330. The dual-core Atom provides much better multi-tasking performance and helps pick up the slack when running video or playing games. Currently the only nettops which seem to be offering the N330 are of the all-in-one variety, which I’ll say more about further in this article.

Besides the processor, the integrated graphics used make a big difference. Currently most nettops use Intel integrated graphics, which offer poor performance. Nettops configured with a single-core Atom and Intel integrated graphics often struggle with high definition video. However, Nvidia’s ION platform has finally hit the American market in the form of the Acer AspireRevo. The ION platform has graphics more than capable of playing high-definition videos and even less intense games such as World of Warcraft and Civilization IV. These major factors aside, storage is the last significant part of the equation. Basic nettops like the mentioned Asus Eee Box often come with only a single gigabyte of RAM, which limits performance. Some nettops, such as the MSI Wind Nettop, are offering two gigabytes of RAM either standard as an option, and it is a worthwhile upgrade. Upgrades to the hard drive can also be worthwhile if the standard 160 gigabyte drive seems limiting.

All for All in One?

MSI Wind Top AE1900

All-in-one PCs have become a popular trend in home computers. They combine the hardware and monitor into one package and offer simplicity by negating the normal rat’s nest of wires and cleaning up the footprint of the entire system. Nettops have quickly become a part of the all-in-one computer market. I’m not a big fan of all-in-one computers. I’m a hardware enthusiast, and an all-in-one PC makes upgrading your own PC very difficult. But for nettops, the all-in-one format makes a lot of sense. However, the normal desktop nettop also has many benefits.

Standard desktop nettops, such as the Asus Eee Box and MSI Wind Nettop, are extremely small. The Asus Eee Box is 7 inches tall by 9 inches deep and only 1 inch thick. It can easily fit behind a monitor, underneath a desk, or on a book shelf, making it almost entirely invisible. These nettops are far less expensive if you already have your own monitor, as both hover around and often under $300 bucks. The ability to choose your own monitor is a great benefit, as well, because you can pick a monitor of whatever size you’d like.

All-in-One nettops come with the monitor and PC permanently fixed together, so you’re stuck with whatever monitor the PC comes with. In most cases this will be a 18 to 20″ widescreen monitor with a resolution of 1366 x 768 or 1600 x 900. A large number of models offer a touchscreen monitor which allows users to navigate via touch rather than the mouse. This seems cool, but don’t over-estimate its usefulness. Browsing the web via touchscreen can be a frustrating experience, so you’ll mostly be using the mouse as you would with any other PC.

The prices of all-in-one nettops are higher than normal nettops, but they’re still a good value if you don’t already have a monitor. The MSI Wind Top, for example, can be configured with a dual-core Atom processor, two gigabytes of RAM, a 18.5″ touchscreen and complimentary keyboard and mouse, all of which will only set you back about $500 dollars. Dropping the specifications down to a single-core Atom will slash the prices further, making it possible to buy an all-in-one nettop for around $420 dollars.

While the difference between the all-in-one nettops and the desktop nettops seems obvious at first, choosing the best nettop for you is complicated by performance. I am not aware of any standard desktop nettops which offer dual-core Atom processors, so if you’re looking for a nettop with an Atom 330 processor you’re going to be forced into buying an all-in-one nettop.

The Features Game

Deciding the performance you want from a nettop and the type of nettop you’d like are the two major decisions when purchasing a new nettop. Once they’re handled, it is time to start focusing on the individual features available from various nettops.

Lenovo Q100

One is wireless networking. The Asus Eee Box offers full 802.11 b/g/n Wireless networking, while the MSI Wind Nettop offers only b/g wireless. All of the all-in-one nettops currently in production offer support for 802.11 b/g/n. Considering that many buy a nettop to minimize the desktop footprint of their desktop PC, the wireless included with a nettop is important. The ports available can also be important, and again there is a big difference between different models. The basic Asus Eee Box has four, which is limiting, but the Lenovo Q100 offers six. Those nettops which have superior video performance, like the Acer AspireRevo and ASUS Eee Top ET2002 All-in-One, often offer HDMI ports. This makes them superior when used in conjunction with second monitor or HDTV.

These are just some of the details which can become important. Some nettops offer card readers, some don’t. Some nettops come with integrated webcams, and some don’t. Most have external power supplies, which can be of various sizes and weights. None of these minor details are likely to make-or-break your decision to buy a specific nettop, but be sure to look over the (often very dull) specifications list before purchasing.

Quick Recommendations

Even people who are knowledgeable about nettops can have a hard time deciding which nettops are the best, so here are a few quick recommendations.

Best Nettop – The Asus Eee Box wins this one handily. The Asus Eee Box is not the least expensive nettop, but it offers the best integrated wireless, has the most stylish chassis, and keeps prices at just a tad over $300 dollars. It does everything you’d need a nettop to do with no drama and no fuss.

Best All-In-One Nettop – The MSI Wind Top AE1900 takes top honors as the best All-In-One. The MSI Wind Top offers a good 18.5 inch touchscreen display, b/g/n wireless, and a dual-core Atom processor for under $500 dollars. The poor integrated graphics can be a handicap, but ION based competitors hover around $100 dollars more.

Best Nettop for Video – The Acer AspireRevo takes this one away without trouble. At over $200 dollars for an ION based nettop and a keyboard and mouse, the Acer AspireRevo is also a competitor for best nettop. It is only the AspireRevo’s lack of integrated wireless which prevents victory over the Asus Eee Box.