You don't need a touchscreen PC. You just don't.
But perhaps you don't actually need a reason. Maybe all you need is a machine with a compelling form factor, a bright screen and a bargain-basement price, which just happens to have touch tacked on.
Maybe you need the Advent Discovery MT1804. Maybe.
The fold-out hinge means that the Discovery is useful in a host of situations; you can angle it backwards if you're placing it on a kitchen worktop, for instance, or fix it at 90 degrees to your desk. You can even, if you really want, lie it flat on a surface without any discernable loss in stability.
Unlike the Apple iMac there's no upward extension, though, so it's not particularly ergonomic on the desk unless you can find something suitable to place it on.
Continuing the iMac comparisons, only because there's not much of this style in the PC market, the built-in DVD drive is awkwardly placed. On the iMac, the superdrive is in a slot flush with the case; here it's a standard pop-out laptop drive tucked away behind the screen to the left, which faces backwards when ejected. It's not easy to get to at all.
It's the same with its ports - we would honestly prefer the overall thickness of the unit to have been extended and the ports dragged out to the very edges of the screen, rather than hidden away on the Discovery MT1804's rear outcrop.
That said, big points are awarded for the inclusion of a power button for the panel on the left edge of the screen, meaning that you can save power while keeping the Discovery MT1804 in use.
The Discovery MT1804 is not a performer, that's for sure. It wouldn't be unreasonable to call it weak, at least in appearance, because its single-core Celeron 900 processor isn't anywhere near the level of modern Core CPUs.
However - being realistic - at 2.2GHz it's not completely without processing merit, and the latest Core line goes above and beyond the call of duty. The Celeron 900 is about as beefy as the current range of Atom chips, perhaps a little more so, which should put it into a little bit of perspective.
That processor isn't helped by the rest of the core components. There's not much muscle in the graphics department, since the Discovery MT1804 sports an XXX integrated chipset, so you can forget about playing 3D games or doing anything particularly high-end on it.
There's a bog standard 320GB HDD spinning at laptop speeds, so storage is reasonable but not remarkable, plus the standard 3GB RAM that you'll find on most cheap notebooks.
So, specification wise, this really is halfway between a laptop and a netbook, wrapped in an all-in-one shell. There's not actually a standard for the PC all-in-one, so there's no point in complaining that it's underpowered: we doubt you'd get much more in a Windows 7 tablet, which would cost a lot more for a lot less.
It's actually pretty well-designed, and we think it hits the intended note, bar a couple of heavy flaws - primary of which is that you're stuck with the standard number of laptop outputs. Use the wired peripherals included and you'll have filled two of the three USB ports immediately, which isn't ideal, particularly because said peripherals are pretty cheap and plasticky.
But most important in this package, given its flexibility and the fact that you'll be smearing your fingers all over it, is the screen. And it's good, a bright widescreen 18.5-inch panel with unusually decent viewing angles, lacking only in resolution at 1366 x 768. It's the perfect size for a bedroom, neat enough for a kitchen counter and adequate for the desk.
We've seen a few touchscreens, and this is not the worst. The Asus EeeTop, for example, uses a fairly heinous virtual touchscreen design that actually reads your finger position from a strip at the top rather than a matrix on the screen, leading to some awful calibration issues.
We presume that the Advent Discovery MT1804 boasts a different design, because once you've run through the multi-point calibration process it's actually rather accurate. It supports limited two-finger multi-touch - so you're not going to be whipping out complex gestures - but its accuracy is pretty remarkable.
The real problem, of course, is Windows: it's not a touchscreen operating system, however much Microsoft might want it to be. The interface isn't consistent; the buttons are too small; and as usual, the Discovery MT1804's default installation is filled with stuff you won't want or need. You'll have to clean it before you use it, and you will find yourself, like we did, reaching for the mouse more often than for the screen.
In terms of muscle, Intel's Celeron 900 is meaty enough to allow the Discovery MT1804 to play 720p video, which can be squirted out of the HDMI port, although the built-in speakers don't really keep up with the video performance. They're rubbish, actually.
3GB RAM is more than enough to keep a few web tabs open and a 320GB, if you're frugal, should be a big enough hard drive for anyone.
But here's the thing: reviews are really about cost/benefit analysis. Performance only really matters if it goes with value for money, and the Advent Discovery MT1804 passes this crucial test with flying colours.
At �330, it feels like an absolute steal - particularly as it's about half the price at which the machine originally launched. You can even buy an additional laptop battery to improve the Discovery MT1804's portability if you want.
A laptop would surely offer more flexibility, but that's not entirely relevant, because the Discovery MT1804 isn't trying to be a laptop: it's trying desperately not to be. Whether it has succeeded is really up to you. We like it more than we thought we would, because it's just strong enough that it would fit just about any low-power stand-alone computing position.
This was a surprising test. We went in to it wanting to hate this machine, but the Advent Discovery MT1804 has a decent touchscreen, a flexible (if slightly wonky) design and a killer price. It completely threw us off our game.
If you're looking for an all-in-one PC, it's definitely one to consider. If we had loads of cash there's no way we'd choose it over an iMac - touchscreen or not - because this doesn't have the power or the luxury screen fidelity of Apple's models, but as a cut-price machine suitable for just about every room of the house, there's no question that it does the trick.
We liked
The hinge, as long as it stays stiff over time, will enable you to position the Discovery MT1804 exactly as you want it, and that's a real selling point. Particularly if you're using this in the kitchen, that flexibility, and the touchscreen, will come in very handy.
It's also able to pump out high-def video, which makes the Discovery MT1804 equally perfect for the bedroom. Its component selection, while not top-class, is hefty enough for the price.
It's not huge, but you're not likely to run out of hard disk space quickly. There's no real graphics performance, but more than enough for office and internet tasks. The option of battery power is nice if you're going to take it from room to room.
Oh, and did we mention the price? We did? Let's do so again. �330, for this package, is just excellent. It really is. Considering that the touchscreen works well, and that it's almost half its original RRP, the Discovery MT1804 is a nicely positioned machine.
We disliked
It's cheap, but it looks cheap too. The peripherals are pretty flimsy and the case design a bit confusing. The Discovery MT1804 lacks USB ports, has a DVD drive which is in an awkward place and facing the wrong way, and a fairly low-res screen.
Basically, if you're looking for a powerhouse, a luxury machine, or even a PC that isn't baffling in its make-up, look elsewhere.
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Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/techradar/allnews/~3/u5ALKX4iSPQ/story01.htm
Minka Kelly Carol Grow Erika Christensen Emilie de Ravin Tara Reed
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