Monoblock Acer Aspire 5600U: outside, inside and under Windows 8
In May of this year, I bought a new desktop - a huge powerful laptop, designed to duplicate (and even replace) a home computer in almost all forms. I chose it for quite a while, and eventually settled on an 18-inch model with a FullHD screen, a quad-core Core i7, a discrete GeForce 555 video card, a Blu-ray drive, and even a remote control disguised as a touchpad. In the process of buying and setting up the desk, from time to time I shared my impressions with Twitter, and several people asked me at once - why did you need to buy such a coffin, if you have long-term quality monoblocks? They are cheaper and less space occupied, and the meaning is exactly the same.
Anyway, I was extremely pleased with the purchase, but still certain doubts were spinning in my head - well, how little dumbfounded? Therefore, during Computex, I looked at several new candy bars on Ivy Bridge from Acer and Asus. And as soon as the first of them reached Russia, I asked the familiar "carters" one copy for a couple of weeks to try on. They became the 23-inch monoblock Acer Aspire 5600U. By tradition, I not only studied the device outside, but also rummaged inside a little.
')
The candy bar comes in a hefty carton box, which you don’t particularly drag, even though there is a convenient plastic handle. Inside is a monoblock itself, a weighty 135-watt power supply made by LiteOn, as well as a compact wireless keyboard and mouse. As a bonus, a weighty metal structure is attached for attaching the candy bar to the wall and the remote control like a television set, and there is a QWERTY keyboard on the back of the latter. At first I was giggling over all these accessories, but in the course of exploring the capabilities of the monoblock, I realized that there was a great benefit from them. However, we will not get ahead.
Remote on both sides
Sticker on the box with the characteristics of a monoblock
The 23-inch Aspire 5600U matrix has a resolution of 1920x1080 pixels, or, more simply, FullHD. It was made using TN + Film technology, but in terms of color quality, it is not much inferior to my home monitor with IPS (yes, I was surprised). Viewing angles, of course, are smaller (vertically and horizontally), but they are not annoyingly small. Not like in my desk, where moving my head to the right or left can significantly change the perception of the image. The response time is not written anywhere, but, according to observations, it is low enough not to spoil the impressions of games and movies. Connoisseurs of radically black color warn you - it is not here, there is only a very dark gray. LED backlighting is quite uniform, and the lower left corner stands out from the rest significantly less than that of many monitors with TN and even IPS matrices (my Philips has the same diagonal much, much worse).
Iron
There are several versions of the Aspire 5600U. In older (and more expensive models), there is a Core i5-3210M processor (third generation, Ivy Bridge) with a clock frequency of 2.5 GHz, which rises to 3.1 GHz in Turbo Boost mode. For me, for the experiments, they gave me a younger model, inside which Core i3-3110M with a frequency of 2.4 GHz and without any “turbo boosts” was found. However, I would have looked at the homework puzzle, not counting the furious installation of terabytes of video in FullHD, where even this weaklinger wouldn’t have enough power. The processor is made on 22-nanometer technology and with a large margin fit into the TDP of 35 watts. There are two cores, but there is support for Hyper-Threading (thanks for not having cut it off in order to underscore the budget of this model).
The first time I see such a funny error with CPU-Z! The processor model is recognized correctly, but the program chose to name it Core i5 .
In conjunction with a rather weak version of the integrated graphics core Intel HD Graphics 4000 (in Core i5 / i7 it is much more cheerful), the Nvidia GeForce GT 630M chip works. This is a new generation of mobile graphics Nvidia: 40-nanometer manufacturing technology, 96 universal cores, 128-bit memory bus, the last one GB. The performance of the GeForce GT 630M is somewhere in the middle between the GeForce 540 and the GeForce 555. That is, nothing special, normal is such a middling. In order to appreciate that they can be paired with a processor, I put on the Acer Aspire 5600U the heart-friendly game World of Tanks (version 0.8.0). The system liked the built-in benchmark so much that in the mode of auto-detection of opportunities, he set it high or maximum settings depending on the mood. Alas, alas. With them, the game turned into a sad slideshow “about tanchiki”, and even at medium settings it was possible to get only 15-17 frames per second. Real “playability” appeared only in the “Low” mode, when the FPS number increased to 25-30.
It is worth noting that WoT from the eighth version began to eat resources much stronger, and the current "low" in the picture is fully consistent with the "medium". This, of course, does not make a monoblock a powerful gaming machine, but partly rehabilitates it.
I also noticed one inconsistency with the drivers. After downloading, the system found a version of ForceWare 296.16, which by now is already hopelessly outdated. However, attempts to update the driver ended unsuccessfully. The distribution kit downloaded from the Nvidia website stubbornly asserted that there was nothing compatible with it in the system, and the work was finished. The same story was repeated in the newly installed Windows 8 (I will tell you about the need to check the candybar under it a little later). On the Acer website, a working driver was found, but, unfortunately, it was the same ancient version. Perhaps when the company updates its distribution, the performance in new games will increase slightly. But a miracle, of course, still should not wait.
As you, probably, already noticed, in a monoblock pretty often there is a laptop iron. Yes, that is right. In fact, the system is a 23-inch monitor, to which the electronics from the notebook of the average price category are attached to the rear. So what else is there? Let's finally look inside.
General view of the electronic filling a monoblock
The hard disk size of my copy was 1 TB. It is 2.5-inch, and if you wish, you can upgrade to 1.5 or even 2 TB (this amount is available in the WD Green line). I was surprised that Toshiba MQ01ABD100 (5400 RPM, SATA-II) works here instead of WD or Seagate, traditionally found in Acer technology. Toshiba is still alive, so she was healthy! The disc behaves very quietly, the speed of work is typical for models with such RPM. In some sources, it is argued that in the neighborhood with hard SSD lives of 20 GB, designed to speed up the system. So in my version of the candy bar it is not, this is a feature of more expensive equipment. However, the computer still responds to commands very quickly, especially if you demolish the pre-installed McAfee antivirus software.
The amount of RAM 4 GB, it is installed one module, and next is a free slot. So to finish up to 8 GB is not a problem at all, but up to 16 if the soul asks.
The AVerMedia A373 TV tuner with DVB-T standard support lives next to the memory. Of course, you can also connect a conventional collective antenna, which dramatically increases the meaning of mounting the Aspire 5600U on the wall. Of course, the diagonal is too small for a large room, but, for example, for a student cell is quite decent. Moreover, the HDMI port of the monoblock works not only outside, but also inside. And accordingly, you can connect to it a variety of devices, from the media player to the game console.
The Atheros adapter with the traditionally musical and well-remembered name AR5B22 combines WiFi and Bluetooth support. Its advantages include support for 2.4- and 5-gigahertz WiFi bands, which makes it almost guaranteed to find a not too littered channel (unfortunately, in high-rise buildings, it is becoming more and more difficult to do). Of the shortcomings, only the inability to work with Intel WiDi technology (wireless display), but, frankly, it is not very necessary in this case.
A separate compliment to the cooling system: it is very, very quiet. Even under a good load, the only turbine is not audible at all. The propeller itself is made by Sunon, a very beloved ultrabook manufacturer.
The iron part of the cooling system is designed by Acer itself, and nothing special stands out except for very, very thin radiator fins, which literally bend under the fingers.
They are also very close to each other, and over time, the radiator can become clogged with dust. Fortunately, the monoblock is simply disassembled, and a thorough cleaning can be done even at home, if you are not afraid to unscrew the two screws on the case of the Aspire 5600U itself and five on the cooling system. At the same time lubricate the graphics chip and the processor with a new portion of thermal paste, it does not hurt.
Graphic chip and processor in the nude
Completing the acquaintance with the iron part, I will add that the monoblock has five USB ports, two of which support the 3.0 standard. They are located reasonably: two of the fastest from the left side, and the rest - on the back. Also on the case there is a multiformat card reader slot and a webcam. There is no need to be surprised - this is a laptop platform, and the set of buns is pretty standard.
A set of connectors on the back of the monoblock
In general, from an iron point of view, this candy bar is a typical representative of the middle class with a slight taste of budget. Somewhat surprising is the lack of support in the Blu-ray format optical drive ... But, on the other hand, I have it in the desktop, but there are no Blu-ray discs at home and are not expected. It seems that their time is over, so really and not starting.
Come, Mikhalych, touch it with your hand ...
And now is the time to recall the main "chip" of this model. At the beginning of the story, I did not specifically specify that the screen in a monoblock has a brilliant glass coating. In this case, it is not present in order to annoy the glossy haters, but because of a much more respectful one. After all, the screen of the Aspire 5600U is touch-sensitive, with Milti-touch support and processing up to ten clicks at a time.
That's just under Windows 7, with which the candy bar comes in at the moment, there is no use for it. No, you can, of course, effectively poke a finger at the Start button and it’s easy to launch Excel. Probably, girls will like this sight, but with a mouse it is somehow faster and more convenient. Therefore, in order to experience the full touch of the touch screen, I installed the final version of Windows 8, sent to me by an old friend, Steve B., on the candybar.
Portrait of Steve B. of my work
Along with the distribution, Steve sent me a megaflash with Windows To Go installed on it. Stuck, by the way, is extremely useful - you can not take a laptop with you on the road, but restrict yourself to such a flash drive. You insert into any computer that has turned up, once and again, and before your eyes is your personal copy of Windows 8 with a familiar set of programs. I did this trick many times on different systems, but for some reason it didn't work out with the Aspire 5600U. At the same place, a message about total misunderstanding between the OS and the hardware took off, after which an inevitable reboot occurred. After suffering about fifteen minutes, I decided to roll Windows 8 onto the hard drive itself, and it was here that everything went perfectly. The “Eight” got up in a few minutes, asked for the driver of the WiFi adapter, then sucked in almost all the other drivers with updates and offered to start work. Among the unidentified devices were the TV tuner and Nvidia graphics (apparently due to the unconventional connection scheme of the latter, because in the Windows 8 laptop this chip identifies a great success), but it took more than five minutes to eliminate this disharmony.
And here it is - the interface of Windows 8, which we have been taught to call Metro for so long. I admit at once that I have been using the G8 on a tablet computer since June, and therefore the enthusiasm for pretty moving tiles has long been over. And in general, I have a lot of questions for this brainchild of Microsoft, but about them, probably, in a separate post.
On the tablet, of course, the new interface is extremely useful. On the desktop, where there is a hardware keyboard and mouse, everything is not so obvious, but perhaps it’s more convenient to open the weather forecast and look through the news with my finger. The same story with scrolling photos and switching to the desired fragment in the video - with your finger it turns out much more agile. I'm not sure that for the sake of this, you should throw your non-touch monitor in the trash or change a laptop, but it's cool.
But anyone who really likes a big touchscreen is children. Testing of the Aspire 5600U under the “eight” came at a time when we were at home alone with a four-year-old son. And you should have seen his reaction when he saw Cut The Rope and - especially - Fruit Ninja on his huge screen. His delight is impossible to describe in words. Wow, bright fruits, the size of a children's fist, fly around the screen, and you can chop them up with both hands! And how good is the eater of flying sweets on 23 inches! How great it is to play virtual drums while simultaneously beating fingers on six or seven varieties!
For some reason, Windows 7 (above) thinks about the graphic component of a monoblock somewhat better than Windows 8 (below)
After the games, I launched the online maps, and the child became extremely interested in how the surroundings of the house look on top. They can be approximated-removed, and also twisted in different directions with two hands, and in children's eyes it looks like something like magic. There were requests to show a kindergarten, a park, a pool and a place of my work. And for a sweet, we still perfectly twisted-twisted panoramas of different cities from the standard for Windows 8 application "Travel".
And then after that I began to relate to touch interfaces on stationary computers with much greater understanding and sympathy. It is unlikely that I have enough drive to upgrade my home computer and laptops in the name of Multi-touch support, and the child will perfectly chop his apples and pineapples on a 13-inch tablet with a figure eight. But in the future, if the price difference between the touch and non-touch screens is small, I will definitely choose the first one.
The only pity is that Windows 8 itself so far can only be considered suitable for fully touch-sensitive control. In the Desktop mode, where the absolute majority of the really needed applications are being launched, it’s completely pointless to poke a finger. And it’s less convenient to control a mouse than under Windows 7. No wonder that the utility that returns the Start button has already become the most popular application for the G8.
Lyrical digression
Before proceeding to the conclusions, I want to briefly describe my model of using the desktop and home computer. They are almost always close by - the desktop (Acer Aspire 8951G) is on the table, and the large computer is under the table. The image from the latter is displayed on a 23-inch monitor with an IPS matrix.
Most of the time I work at workflow. Typing, draft processing of photos and videos, Internet surfing, correspondence, short runs in World of Tanks - it's all on it. I like very much that you can work with high speed and on a rather large 18-inch screen, not worrying about data integrity (there are two hard drives in the system), blinks of electricity (the battery lasts for 6 hours) and easily moving from room to room. Yes, and the willingness to work a few seconds after lifting the lid ... is captivating.
But when I need serious performance and / or high-quality picture, I turn on a large computer. It has a rather serious configuration - Core i7 Extreme Edition, GeForce GTX 670, 12 GB of memory, fast SSD for the operating system and WD Velociraptor for data. So the final processing of large volumes of images and videos, as well as really beautiful games, is only on it. But writing texts on such a monster is somehow inconvenient. All the same, that on a real frame SUV to carry a lap dog for a pedicure.
And now - to the conclusions about the Acer monoblock.
Total
I really liked that to get started, the Acer Aspire 5600U just enough to plug into the outlet. No need to mess around with cables, a mouse with a keyboard will pick up on your own (they didn’t need drivers even after installing Windows 8 from scratch), entered the WiFi password - and it went. The monoblock is quite easily transferred from the room to the room, if only in the new place there was a flat surface of sufficient area. When mounted on the wall, you can save a lot of space on the table (the thickness, or, rather, the thinness of the body in the thickest place is 35 mm). A well-thought-out cooling system will not annoy the owner with its sounds (to tell you the truth, sometimes it annoys me). Finally, the device looks very nice and modern, which makes it a peculiar decoration of the room.
Could he fit into my life, replacing both the desktop and the big computer? Yes, but with three important reservations.
First, it must have a screen with an IPS or * VA matrix. Without this, due to the specifics of the work, I can not do.
Secondly, I need a much more productive video card. Game developers seem to have moderated their appetites, and Nvidia / AMD desktop solutions related to the upper part of the middle level (and how to say more precisely?), I usually have enough for seeing all (well, almost all) the beauty of new toys. But mobile chips are still far from reaching them, alas.
Thirdly, the built-in battery would not hurt. Let a small container, capable of feeding the system no more than half an hour, but that was. You can, of course, connect a monoblock to the UPS, but since it’s entirely a completely notebook platform, why not add this element?
These are my needs.Not sure what the model - but what really is.
If you rarely process photos for publication in a magazine, and play games with extreme restraint, a candy bar is an excellent choice for you. So, I would love to give the Aspire 5600U to my parents - for them such a “thing in itself” fits much better than the current “just computer”.
But for this you need to be quite a wealthy guy. My version of a monoblock retail costs from 35,000 rubles. A copy of the Core i5 and "accelerating" SSD will cost about 40 thousand. Finally, for 45 thousand you can buy an Aspire 5600U with the above listed buns and 8 gigabytes of RAM in addition, although I will not recommend this option. Two modules of 8 GB each now cost less than three thousand, and paying five for a 4-gigabyte one is absolutely absurd.
Yes, and I have a feeling that in a couple of years under the home computers we will have in mind exactly monoblocks.
Anyway, I was extremely pleased with the purchase, but still certain doubts were spinning in my head - well, how little dumbfounded? Therefore, during Computex, I looked at several new candy bars on Ivy Bridge from Acer and Asus. And as soon as the first of them reached Russia, I asked the familiar "carters" one copy for a couple of weeks to try on. They became the 23-inch monoblock Acer Aspire 5600U. By tradition, I not only studied the device outside, but also rummaged inside a little.
')
The candy bar comes in a hefty carton box, which you don’t particularly drag, even though there is a convenient plastic handle. Inside is a monoblock itself, a weighty 135-watt power supply made by LiteOn, as well as a compact wireless keyboard and mouse. As a bonus, a weighty metal structure is attached for attaching the candy bar to the wall and the remote control like a television set, and there is a QWERTY keyboard on the back of the latter. At first I was giggling over all these accessories, but in the course of exploring the capabilities of the monoblock, I realized that there was a great benefit from them. However, we will not get ahead.
Remote on both sides
Sticker on the box with the characteristics of a monoblock
The 23-inch Aspire 5600U matrix has a resolution of 1920x1080 pixels, or, more simply, FullHD. It was made using TN + Film technology, but in terms of color quality, it is not much inferior to my home monitor with IPS (yes, I was surprised). Viewing angles, of course, are smaller (vertically and horizontally), but they are not annoyingly small. Not like in my desk, where moving my head to the right or left can significantly change the perception of the image. The response time is not written anywhere, but, according to observations, it is low enough not to spoil the impressions of games and movies. Connoisseurs of radically black color warn you - it is not here, there is only a very dark gray. LED backlighting is quite uniform, and the lower left corner stands out from the rest significantly less than that of many monitors with TN and even IPS matrices (my Philips has the same diagonal much, much worse).
Iron
There are several versions of the Aspire 5600U. In older (and more expensive models), there is a Core i5-3210M processor (third generation, Ivy Bridge) with a clock frequency of 2.5 GHz, which rises to 3.1 GHz in Turbo Boost mode. For me, for the experiments, they gave me a younger model, inside which Core i3-3110M with a frequency of 2.4 GHz and without any “turbo boosts” was found. However, I would have looked at the homework puzzle, not counting the furious installation of terabytes of video in FullHD, where even this weaklinger wouldn’t have enough power. The processor is made on 22-nanometer technology and with a large margin fit into the TDP of 35 watts. There are two cores, but there is support for Hyper-Threading (thanks for not having cut it off in order to underscore the budget of this model).
The first time I see such a funny error with CPU-Z! The processor model is recognized correctly, but the program chose to name it Core i5 .
In conjunction with a rather weak version of the integrated graphics core Intel HD Graphics 4000 (in Core i5 / i7 it is much more cheerful), the Nvidia GeForce GT 630M chip works. This is a new generation of mobile graphics Nvidia: 40-nanometer manufacturing technology, 96 universal cores, 128-bit memory bus, the last one GB. The performance of the GeForce GT 630M is somewhere in the middle between the GeForce 540 and the GeForce 555. That is, nothing special, normal is such a middling. In order to appreciate that they can be paired with a processor, I put on the Acer Aspire 5600U the heart-friendly game World of Tanks (version 0.8.0). The system liked the built-in benchmark so much that in the mode of auto-detection of opportunities, he set it high or maximum settings depending on the mood. Alas, alas. With them, the game turned into a sad slideshow “about tanchiki”, and even at medium settings it was possible to get only 15-17 frames per second. Real “playability” appeared only in the “Low” mode, when the FPS number increased to 25-30.
It is worth noting that WoT from the eighth version began to eat resources much stronger, and the current "low" in the picture is fully consistent with the "medium". This, of course, does not make a monoblock a powerful gaming machine, but partly rehabilitates it.
I also noticed one inconsistency with the drivers. After downloading, the system found a version of ForceWare 296.16, which by now is already hopelessly outdated. However, attempts to update the driver ended unsuccessfully. The distribution kit downloaded from the Nvidia website stubbornly asserted that there was nothing compatible with it in the system, and the work was finished. The same story was repeated in the newly installed Windows 8 (I will tell you about the need to check the candybar under it a little later). On the Acer website, a working driver was found, but, unfortunately, it was the same ancient version. Perhaps when the company updates its distribution, the performance in new games will increase slightly. But a miracle, of course, still should not wait.
As you, probably, already noticed, in a monoblock pretty often there is a laptop iron. Yes, that is right. In fact, the system is a 23-inch monitor, to which the electronics from the notebook of the average price category are attached to the rear. So what else is there? Let's finally look inside.
General view of the electronic filling a monoblock
The hard disk size of my copy was 1 TB. It is 2.5-inch, and if you wish, you can upgrade to 1.5 or even 2 TB (this amount is available in the WD Green line). I was surprised that Toshiba MQ01ABD100 (5400 RPM, SATA-II) works here instead of WD or Seagate, traditionally found in Acer technology. Toshiba is still alive, so she was healthy! The disc behaves very quietly, the speed of work is typical for models with such RPM. In some sources, it is argued that in the neighborhood with hard SSD lives of 20 GB, designed to speed up the system. So in my version of the candy bar it is not, this is a feature of more expensive equipment. However, the computer still responds to commands very quickly, especially if you demolish the pre-installed McAfee antivirus software.
The amount of RAM 4 GB, it is installed one module, and next is a free slot. So to finish up to 8 GB is not a problem at all, but up to 16 if the soul asks.
The AVerMedia A373 TV tuner with DVB-T standard support lives next to the memory. Of course, you can also connect a conventional collective antenna, which dramatically increases the meaning of mounting the Aspire 5600U on the wall. Of course, the diagonal is too small for a large room, but, for example, for a student cell is quite decent. Moreover, the HDMI port of the monoblock works not only outside, but also inside. And accordingly, you can connect to it a variety of devices, from the media player to the game console.
The Atheros adapter with the traditionally musical and well-remembered name AR5B22 combines WiFi and Bluetooth support. Its advantages include support for 2.4- and 5-gigahertz WiFi bands, which makes it almost guaranteed to find a not too littered channel (unfortunately, in high-rise buildings, it is becoming more and more difficult to do). Of the shortcomings, only the inability to work with Intel WiDi technology (wireless display), but, frankly, it is not very necessary in this case.
A separate compliment to the cooling system: it is very, very quiet. Even under a good load, the only turbine is not audible at all. The propeller itself is made by Sunon, a very beloved ultrabook manufacturer.
The iron part of the cooling system is designed by Acer itself, and nothing special stands out except for very, very thin radiator fins, which literally bend under the fingers.
They are also very close to each other, and over time, the radiator can become clogged with dust. Fortunately, the monoblock is simply disassembled, and a thorough cleaning can be done even at home, if you are not afraid to unscrew the two screws on the case of the Aspire 5600U itself and five on the cooling system. At the same time lubricate the graphics chip and the processor with a new portion of thermal paste, it does not hurt.
Graphic chip and processor in the nude
Completing the acquaintance with the iron part, I will add that the monoblock has five USB ports, two of which support the 3.0 standard. They are located reasonably: two of the fastest from the left side, and the rest - on the back. Also on the case there is a multiformat card reader slot and a webcam. There is no need to be surprised - this is a laptop platform, and the set of buns is pretty standard.
A set of connectors on the back of the monoblock
In general, from an iron point of view, this candy bar is a typical representative of the middle class with a slight taste of budget. Somewhat surprising is the lack of support in the Blu-ray format optical drive ... But, on the other hand, I have it in the desktop, but there are no Blu-ray discs at home and are not expected. It seems that their time is over, so really and not starting.
Come, Mikhalych, touch it with your hand ...
And now is the time to recall the main "chip" of this model. At the beginning of the story, I did not specifically specify that the screen in a monoblock has a brilliant glass coating. In this case, it is not present in order to annoy the glossy haters, but because of a much more respectful one. After all, the screen of the Aspire 5600U is touch-sensitive, with Milti-touch support and processing up to ten clicks at a time.
That's just under Windows 7, with which the candy bar comes in at the moment, there is no use for it. No, you can, of course, effectively poke a finger at the Start button and it’s easy to launch Excel. Probably, girls will like this sight, but with a mouse it is somehow faster and more convenient. Therefore, in order to experience the full touch of the touch screen, I installed the final version of Windows 8, sent to me by an old friend, Steve B., on the candybar.
Portrait of Steve B. of my work
Along with the distribution, Steve sent me a megaflash with Windows To Go installed on it. Stuck, by the way, is extremely useful - you can not take a laptop with you on the road, but restrict yourself to such a flash drive. You insert into any computer that has turned up, once and again, and before your eyes is your personal copy of Windows 8 with a familiar set of programs. I did this trick many times on different systems, but for some reason it didn't work out with the Aspire 5600U. At the same place, a message about total misunderstanding between the OS and the hardware took off, after which an inevitable reboot occurred. After suffering about fifteen minutes, I decided to roll Windows 8 onto the hard drive itself, and it was here that everything went perfectly. The “Eight” got up in a few minutes, asked for the driver of the WiFi adapter, then sucked in almost all the other drivers with updates and offered to start work. Among the unidentified devices were the TV tuner and Nvidia graphics (apparently due to the unconventional connection scheme of the latter, because in the Windows 8 laptop this chip identifies a great success), but it took more than five minutes to eliminate this disharmony.
And here it is - the interface of Windows 8, which we have been taught to call Metro for so long. I admit at once that I have been using the G8 on a tablet computer since June, and therefore the enthusiasm for pretty moving tiles has long been over. And in general, I have a lot of questions for this brainchild of Microsoft, but about them, probably, in a separate post.
On the tablet, of course, the new interface is extremely useful. On the desktop, where there is a hardware keyboard and mouse, everything is not so obvious, but perhaps it’s more convenient to open the weather forecast and look through the news with my finger. The same story with scrolling photos and switching to the desired fragment in the video - with your finger it turns out much more agile. I'm not sure that for the sake of this, you should throw your non-touch monitor in the trash or change a laptop, but it's cool.
But anyone who really likes a big touchscreen is children. Testing of the Aspire 5600U under the “eight” came at a time when we were at home alone with a four-year-old son. And you should have seen his reaction when he saw Cut The Rope and - especially - Fruit Ninja on his huge screen. His delight is impossible to describe in words. Wow, bright fruits, the size of a children's fist, fly around the screen, and you can chop them up with both hands! And how good is the eater of flying sweets on 23 inches! How great it is to play virtual drums while simultaneously beating fingers on six or seven varieties!
For some reason, Windows 7 (above) thinks about the graphic component of a monoblock somewhat better than Windows 8 (below)
After the games, I launched the online maps, and the child became extremely interested in how the surroundings of the house look on top. They can be approximated-removed, and also twisted in different directions with two hands, and in children's eyes it looks like something like magic. There were requests to show a kindergarten, a park, a pool and a place of my work. And for a sweet, we still perfectly twisted-twisted panoramas of different cities from the standard for Windows 8 application "Travel".
And then after that I began to relate to touch interfaces on stationary computers with much greater understanding and sympathy. It is unlikely that I have enough drive to upgrade my home computer and laptops in the name of Multi-touch support, and the child will perfectly chop his apples and pineapples on a 13-inch tablet with a figure eight. But in the future, if the price difference between the touch and non-touch screens is small, I will definitely choose the first one.
The only pity is that Windows 8 itself so far can only be considered suitable for fully touch-sensitive control. In the Desktop mode, where the absolute majority of the really needed applications are being launched, it’s completely pointless to poke a finger. And it’s less convenient to control a mouse than under Windows 7. No wonder that the utility that returns the Start button has already become the most popular application for the G8.
Lyrical digression
Before proceeding to the conclusions, I want to briefly describe my model of using the desktop and home computer. They are almost always close by - the desktop (Acer Aspire 8951G) is on the table, and the large computer is under the table. The image from the latter is displayed on a 23-inch monitor with an IPS matrix.
Most of the time I work at workflow. Typing, draft processing of photos and videos, Internet surfing, correspondence, short runs in World of Tanks - it's all on it. I like very much that you can work with high speed and on a rather large 18-inch screen, not worrying about data integrity (there are two hard drives in the system), blinks of electricity (the battery lasts for 6 hours) and easily moving from room to room. Yes, and the willingness to work a few seconds after lifting the lid ... is captivating.
But when I need serious performance and / or high-quality picture, I turn on a large computer. It has a rather serious configuration - Core i7 Extreme Edition, GeForce GTX 670, 12 GB of memory, fast SSD for the operating system and WD Velociraptor for data. So the final processing of large volumes of images and videos, as well as really beautiful games, is only on it. But writing texts on such a monster is somehow inconvenient. All the same, that on a real frame SUV to carry a lap dog for a pedicure.
And now - to the conclusions about the Acer monoblock.
Total
I really liked that to get started, the Acer Aspire 5600U just enough to plug into the outlet. No need to mess around with cables, a mouse with a keyboard will pick up on your own (they didn’t need drivers even after installing Windows 8 from scratch), entered the WiFi password - and it went. The monoblock is quite easily transferred from the room to the room, if only in the new place there was a flat surface of sufficient area. When mounted on the wall, you can save a lot of space on the table (the thickness, or, rather, the thinness of the body in the thickest place is 35 mm). A well-thought-out cooling system will not annoy the owner with its sounds (to tell you the truth, sometimes it annoys me). Finally, the device looks very nice and modern, which makes it a peculiar decoration of the room.
Could he fit into my life, replacing both the desktop and the big computer? Yes, but with three important reservations.
First, it must have a screen with an IPS or * VA matrix. Without this, due to the specifics of the work, I can not do.
Secondly, I need a much more productive video card. Game developers seem to have moderated their appetites, and Nvidia / AMD desktop solutions related to the upper part of the middle level (and how to say more precisely?), I usually have enough for seeing all (well, almost all) the beauty of new toys. But mobile chips are still far from reaching them, alas.
Thirdly, the built-in battery would not hurt. Let a small container, capable of feeding the system no more than half an hour, but that was. You can, of course, connect a monoblock to the UPS, but since it’s entirely a completely notebook platform, why not add this element?
These are my needs.Not sure what the model - but what really is.
If you rarely process photos for publication in a magazine, and play games with extreme restraint, a candy bar is an excellent choice for you. So, I would love to give the Aspire 5600U to my parents - for them such a “thing in itself” fits much better than the current “just computer”.
But for this you need to be quite a wealthy guy. My version of a monoblock retail costs from 35,000 rubles. A copy of the Core i5 and "accelerating" SSD will cost about 40 thousand. Finally, for 45 thousand you can buy an Aspire 5600U with the above listed buns and 8 gigabytes of RAM in addition, although I will not recommend this option. Two modules of 8 GB each now cost less than three thousand, and paying five for a 4-gigabyte one is absolutely absurd.
Yes, and I have a feeling that in a couple of years under the home computers we will have in mind exactly monoblocks.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/154731/
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