Desktops

Face it, the whole point of buying a touchscreen anything is, um, touching the thing, so it’s usually nice to get a bit of touching in before the sale, just to make certain sure it’s throwing off the right touching vibes. Touching. Well, HP’s TouchSmart 2, which started shipping late last month from HP’s online store, is now ready to get smudged up at a retail store near you, and will be available in $1,299 (IQ504) and $1,499 (IQ506) editions, the latter of which sports a TV-tuner.

We find it impossible to think that anyone in attendance of a local LAN party wouldn’t be awestruck when this rig waltzed in, and truthfully, we’d be a little distracted by its boyish good looks all the while. TiTON — the same mastermind that brought us the Team Fortress 2 Dispenser — has recreated a TF2 sentry that (unfortunately) fires no real shells at enemies. On the upside, it does pack enough hardware to enable gamers to light up rebel forces within a digital realm, but just like your 16th birthday cake, this one may be too pretty to indulge in. Tap the read link for lots more images and a breakdown of the build.

Intel’s Skulltrail gaming platform (we’re still refusing to call it the “Intel Dual Socket Extreme Desktop Platform”) has been out for a while now, but there haven’t been too many pre-built systems based on the design — in fact, all we’ve seen so far is the $6,799 Vigor Colossus desktop, which Computer Shopper just had in for a review. As you’d expect from a machine powered by two $1,499 Core 2 Extreme QX9775 processors and dual CrossFireX ATI Radeon HD 3870 X2 graphics cards, it’s not exactly slow — in fact, it was the fastest machine CS has ever tested in certain tests, putting up a 21,902 score in Cinebench 10, and a 6,695 mark in the Futuremark PCMark Vantage full-system test. All that power isn’t necessarily useful, though: you’ll have to be running serious multithreaded apps to really flex all eight cores, which means GPU-bound games won’t get that much of a boost. Plus you’ll have to deal with some major fans, relatively slow boot-up times, and some serious heat — but come on, you know you want one.

Don’t deny it — you totally blew the original Duct Tape Server off as some one-off project created after a hard night of truth or dare, but the DTS team is out to prove that this here is no fad. Just this week the DTS II (that’s Duct Tape Server II for those who prefer things broken down) was introduced shortly after DTS I came unglued. Reportedly, this unit will be on server row at MillionManLan and will pack a 2.2GHz Pentium 4, 1GB of RAM, an 80GB hard drive and a few fans to keep things breezy. Hit up the read link for a slew of build shots, and click on through for a quick video.

Always wanted to install a little computer into your home theater but none of the available options are cutting it, what with all the giant media files and HD displays you’re rolling? Enter Acer’s Aspire X1200, which for $450 includes on-board NVIDIA GeForce 8200 graphics, an AMD Athlon X2 2850e processor, and HDMI port. Acer promises full 7.1-channel audio support as well as the guts to work with H.264, VC1, and MPEG2 and the spunk to output 1080P. The whole shebang comes in a rack-friendly 10.6 x 4.0 x 14.4-inch enclosure. Of course, prices scale up to $699 based on your needs — the latter coming with a 22-inch display — but the base price will get you a 320GB SATA II drive and the start of what could be a sweet little home theater PC.

We know pretty much everything about Asus’ Atom-powered Eee Box — we even have a bevvy of pretty pictures — but as of yet we didn’t know exactly how much the little bugger was going to cost. Fret not, for we now can tell you that the Wii-like computer will cost £199 ($392) — including keyboard and mouse — and will pack an 80GB HDD and a DVI out. It will come with Windows XP Home pre-installed while those two USB ports are confirmed. No word yet on stateside pricing and release date, but we’ll keep our eyes open.

[Thanks, Joe]

Well, we suppose the first two Orange Box mods we saw were Portal-related, but a love for Half-Life 2 is really implied in anything Valve-related, and this here Team Fortress 2 case mod feels like the end to a beautiful, Orange story — or perhaps the beginning of another. We’ll confess, we got our ass handed to us enough times in TF2 to make it a rare incident when we’d even make it to a Dispenser, but there’s love for this glorious blue box all the same, and TiTON has certainly done his homework in building the thing. Props all around. Now can someone swap to medic and give us a little backup over here?

Averatec’s been trying to bring a little pop to its products lately, and the new All-In-One PC (seriously, that’s what it’s called) is the company’s sleekest effort to date, copping a little style from both the iMac and the Gateway One. Your $1249 won’t buy you anything spectacular behind that 22-inch display, but it’s not too bad either: 2.4GHz E4600 Core 2 Duo with GeForce 8400 graphics, 2GB RAM, a 320GB disk, and Vista Home Premium. That’s not a particularly astounding deal compared to the name-brand all-in-ones, but the specs are slightly better, so if you’re spending nights ripping the labels off your jeans, it looks like you’ve got the perfect machine to start working on that followup to Plastic Surgery Disasters.

Wait a second — are absurdly large, overdecorated gaming desktops making a comeback? With Acer’s Aspire Predator and ASUS’ ARES CG6155 lighting up eyes everywhere, we’re beginning to think yes — particularly when you take one glance at Packard Bell’s elephantine ipower X2.0. Revealed at the Electronic Sports World Cup in Paris, this beast features a tremendously large, high-gloss chassis, a liquid cooling system, a dedicated lock to keep PCB snatchers at bay and a nice array of components including Intel’s Core 2 Quad / Extreme processor, a Blu-ray optical drive, hybrid TV tuner, up to 3TB of storage, a NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GX2, a 21-in-1 card reader and a gaming keyboard / mouse. Somehow, Packard Bell is managing to offer this thing up for anywhere between £999 ($1,979) and £infinity, but don’t count on securing one ’til Christmas. [Warning: PDF read link]

[Via Trusted Reviews]

The folks at EFiX don’t exactly have the best record of sticking to promised release dates, but the company’s CEO and lead engineer, Wilhelm von Vnukov, now tells us that the V2 edition of the OSX-installing device for desktop PCs will be available on Monday (July 7th), “I think,” with the V1 version set to follow three to four weeks later (still no word on the promised device for laptops). According to the website, the only difference between the two is the addition for support of “several motherboards” on the V2, as well as “experimental support for some prototype motherboards.” What’s more, the company has also now confirmed that the price for the initial batch will be €80 (or about $125), although availability seems to be confined to Taiwan and Bulgaria at the moment, with a number of other countries (including the United States) listed as being “in negotiation.” The company is also promiising that the price will be substantially lower once the device enters mass production, although it’s unsurprisingly not making any promises as to when that might happen.