The Irish may be a few hours ahead of us Yanks, but that's not stopping us from snooping on their web pages. Dell's long-awaited
Inspiron Zino HD has finally popped official over on the outfit's IE portal, and considering that it even made
a brief appearance on the US site over the weekend, we're guessing it's only a matter of hours, minutes and / or nanoseconds before the minuscule desktop shows up everywhere. A total of ten interchangeable colors and designs are being offered on the machine (which gets going at €329), not to mention an integrated HDMI socket and an optional Blu-ray drive. Unlike most of the mini PCs out there today, this one actually has a specs list worth drooling over, and if we can figure out how to get a TV tuner in here, we'd say we just might be looking at our next bedroom
HTPC. C'mon US admins -- it's not
that early in Round Rock.
[Thanks, Andy]
Update: It's
now live in the UK! Another market down, a few hundred to go...
posted November 10th 2009 9:36AM
Looks nice and you can get the ATI Radeon™ HD 4330 512MB graphics upgrade for free at the moment.
However I'm a bit wary of 64-bit Windows 7, would rather the 32-bit version as I know then that everything I throw at it will work...
I stuck 64-bit home premium win7 on my desktop, and it has run every program that I have thrown at it (including alot of 6-7 year old video games that I put on there for my kids). Feels significantly faster then the 32 bit XP that I had on there before.
I wouldn't worry so much. XP 64-bit was a disaster because it came too far after the original release of XP and yet still before most people needed 64-bit because 4 GB of RAM was unheard of in desktops then, and therefore it never got driver support or even many applications to take advantage of 64-bit (definitely not mainstream apps). Microsoft got 64-bit right with Vista in the sense that it was released simultaneously with 32-bit, and the fact that 4 GB of RAM reached critical mass of becoming nearly the norm (or at least not considered super-high-end) in PCs during its lifecycle. Even though driver support was a bit of an issue when Vista was first released, now 3 years later the hardware vendors have finally come around with reliable 64-bit drivers. Which means that now with Windows 7, you should be fine on 64-bit. I'm running it on 3 PCs and don't have an issue, and I also think it speaks volumes that Dell is selling Windows 7 64-bit with their Inspiron laptops; you can't even choose 32-bit unless you head over to the Latitude line. The fact that they're selling 64-bit to consumers rather than blocking it or burying the option in an obscure, tiny link somewhere is telling.
Unless you have an ancient printer or scanner, I don't think you'll have an issue at all. Drivers are the biggest barrier, but as long as you have reasonably modern hardware you'll be golden. 64-bit has much better memory management as well (no 4GB max, 2GB per process limits), plus it has a few security enhancements that 32-bit doesn't, so I'd take the plunge.
2.1 audio? Deal-buster for me.
It has a Blu-Ray Drive then they put in an Integrated 2.1 Channel High Definition Audio card??
You know you can aways use an external sound card.
Loads of people are asking about the Audio - I cant for the life of me find anywhere on dell/google suggesting that the HDMI carries digital audio, but I can't believe they would omit some kind of digital audio output if they put a BD in.
Would this be able to play 1080p files?
athlon low voltage dual core. I hope they release a version with intel clarkdale processor. That should give it bit more oomph.
How much!!!!
Sorry, but once again, when you look at the Mac offering, considering the quality, sexiness, re-sale value and included software (iLife suite) etc, the Dells a bit of a looser! They even charge more for a different colour lid ... laughable! In fact, with extra cost for all components, anyone who chooses this over an iMac is crazy - thats a whole computer in the screen, better specced, better priced ... sorry Dell ... FAIL!!!!
you do know that if you want to change the color on your imac (why are we comparing this to an imac again??!?!) that you'd have to pay extra to a third party vendor, right?
Do macs come with a Blu Ray player?
@kaslings
because it looks like a mac product.
Oh look, it's a Mac Mini... oh wait. Hey, actually this isn't bad. Not at all. Want.
Mac Mini with Windows 7 native. That's already a plus in my book.
So, can I not just get this, plug in the HDHomeRun TV tuner, install MythTV and hit the ground running with a new, internet browsing, media streaming, DVR and Blueray player?
As for the comment about the 2.1 audio out, I was considering just using the audio throughput on the HDMI. Will this not work?
So how does Dell justify an "Apple Tax" on this? Its more expensive than a Mac Mini.
The blu-ray is nice. But don't get at "oh, the mini doesn't have HDMI" because it does with a $10 dongle.
This machine comes at a base of ~$500 USD, if you convert the British Pound price.
Lets compare for what you get at around $600 USD, the mac mini base price:
In this scenerio, the Zino is around $650 usd
CPU - Zino AMD X2 3250E 1.5ghz | Mini Intel Core2 Duo 2.26ghz
RAM - 2GB
HDD - Zino 320GB | Mini 160 GB
Graphics - Zino ATI Radeon™ HD 4330 (its $100 usd cheaper with an integrated card) | Mini NVIDIA GeForce 9400M
Optical - Both equal (8x dvd/rw combo), though Blu-Ray for Zino (+$217 usd)
So for almost the same price, you don't even get a graphics card? If you add one, its more expensive than the Mac Mini.
What you do get is more HDD (2x as much), and a free wired keyboard and mouse, as if we all need another one of those.
Though the option of Blu-ray is a huge plus, even at the premium price.
My point is simple though: PC fanboys should stop talking about "Apple Tax" when this Dell is similarly priced, if not even more expensive.
@MRod305
You're forgetting the 17% tax for selling anything in the UK. You can't just convert the British Pound to dollars and expect that to be what it will sell for in the US. I'd suggest you wait for the price to come out in the US before getting too worked up over this. Though, I do appreciate your comparison. You did a nice job on this. Just thought I'd point out your oversight.
Example:
Xbox 360 Elite: $299 USD 230 pounds = $383 28% increase in price
The Apple tax exists. It just seems to be an exponential curve, where the price of their product is reflected on the x-axis with the curve skyrocketing as you head to their more expensive products.
The base Mac Pro is a virtual pair of fists up the ass. A Quad Core Xeon, 3 gigs of ram and a embarrassing GT 120 for $2499? There is a near $1000 Apple Tax on that guy.
...the pic makes me think of Maribelle Chocolates...sad but true...http://www.mariebelle.com/s.nl/it.A/id.705/.f?sc=8&category=1237
Don't understand why putting on Radeon 4330 when there is a MXM module...
Waiting for some other explanations on HDMI version (1.2 or 1.3)...
I clearly wait for a test before saying it will be mine !
@thebolster
I *would* like to see someone design a computer in this category that doesn't look like the mac mini, as it happens.
Doesn't mean this thing won't sell, though. Good specs, runs windows AND looks kinda like a mac? Yeah, big seller for the people who invented their own OS. Fair play.
@Mrod, Check out the mac mini prices on the UK store: http://www.apple.com/uk/macmini/, we pay about $1000 for one over here if you do a straight pound to dollar conversion.
You can't just convert £ to $... stuff costs more in the UK than it does in the US, always has. You pay 99 cents for itunes tracks, we pay 99 pence (about 50% more). It's like that with everything, when I went on holiday over there I was stunned at how cheap everything is - especially food!
At £299, this thing is a lot cheaper than the £499 mac mini, and so are it's upgrade options.
Want!
So if they made a spherical PC would it be called Kino?
Pop a Clarkdale chip in there come January, and make it fanless - and you've got yourself a customer, Mr. Dell.
I guarantee this thing will be as much $$ (or more) as a Mac Mini...
These look cool, plus the orange and black one matches Ubuntu. Would make a nice little nix box, AFTER I DUMP ON IT! GRRR!
Way cool but utterly useless to me as long as it's running Windows.
Only interested in if it can be hackintoshed.