At the Mercy of Microsoft

The biggest limitation to these all in one designs is that if you're an OEM other than Apple or basically if you're shipping a Windows system, you're bound by the abilities of the OS. Apple is in a unique position as it controls the hardware and software stack to tightly integrate the two, resulting in features that just work.

Over the past year Dell has taken notice of its need to be more of a software and hardware developer and recently introduced its first major addition to Vista, it's called the Dell Dock.


The Dell Dock, it sits at the top of your screen

Sitting at the top of your screen, the Dell dock is reminiscent of Apple's Dock in Mac OS X but with a more limited purpose.

The Dell Dock is actually surprisingly good, it's a great way of condensing the handful of frequently used applications into an easy to access launch bar. It keeps your desktop clean and since most users only need a handful of applications, it significantly reduces trips to the Start Menu which has honestly outlived much of its usefulness over the years.


It's customizable, just drag new shortcuts onto it

The XPS One ships with IE7 as the default web browser, which just felt wrong. The first thing I found myself doing is looking for either Firefox or Chrome, I settled on the latter and simply drug the desktop icon to the Internet menu in the Dock. The Dock added Google Chrome to the Internet category, then asked me if I wanted to remove the Chrome icon from the desktop - how sweet.

Where the Dell Dock falls short is in its inability to truly replace the taskbar. Switching between applications still requires an ALT+TAB, Vista's Flip3D or a visit to the taskbar. Dell's Dock addresses the issue of launching applications, but finding and moving between apps remains issues that Windows needs to address. It looks like Microsoft plans on doing this with Windows 7, but at a year away from launch Dell needs to find something to do in the interim.

The Vista hindrance continues to limit Dell even if we look at the simple things. Both Windows Vista and Mac OS X support a hybrid sleep mode where the contents of memory are written to disk as well as kept active in main memory. So long as you have power, your machine will wake up from sleep nearly instantaneously as all data is still valid in main memory. Lose power and the contents of memory are safe on your disk and simply restored as soon as you get power back.

The suspend to RAM nature of this hybrid sleep means that waking up from sleep should be instant, which it is on both Vista and OS X. For whatever reason however, Vista takes longer to give you full control of your system once more. The table below shows how long it takes from sleep to when I can begin using my mouse on both the Dell XPS One 24 (or any other Vista machine for that matter) vs. Apple's 24" iMac:

  Apple iMac (OS X) Apple iMac (Vista) Dell XPS One 24 (Vista)
Time to fully wakeup from Sleep 7 seconds 10 seconds 12 seconds

 

The Dell XPS One 24 took around 12 seconds to give me an active mouse after being woken up from sleep, the 24" iMac actually woke up in 3.8 seconds but needed 7 seconds total to restore the active network connection. OS X appears to get you back to your desktop sooner and definitely back to work quicker than Vista. I ran the same test on the iMac running Vista just to make sure that hardware differences weren't the cause, and it took the iMac approximately 10 seconds to give me a working mouse cursor after being pulled out of sleep.

For some reason Vista seems to take longer to wake up your input devices from sleep than OS X, it's not a huge deal but again, something that's out of Dell's hands to do anything about.

Remember the issues I mentioned earlier about the brightness and volume display not working with Pidgin in the foreground? Once again I suspect that these are OS/software interaction issues.


Very Apple-esque, nice work Dell


Not too different, eh?

None of the problems here are tremendous, but they do illustrate key frustrations that OEMs like Dell are facing these days. As time goes on, these OEMs must be equal parts software and hardware developers in order to truly complete their platforms. We're seeing a bit of that today, but more is necessary.

Blu-ray and TV Tuner Support The New Apple iMac
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  • strikeback03 - Monday, November 3, 2008 - link

    I saw a post saying it is replaceable, it just requires disassembling the entire computer FROM THE FRONT.
  • Griswold - Friday, October 31, 2008 - link

    My vista box takes ~8s to get from suspend to RAM back to login when keyboard and mouse works again. Must be the jobs distortion field delaying things around your desk. :p

    Oh and one more thing, the "dock" was not invented by apple. No need for a patronizing tone towards Dell for making their own dock for vista.
  • Zebo - Friday, October 31, 2008 - link

    Really things like 750 GB and quad core mean nothing top this crowd. Why not talk about the quality of screens? Apples uses an expensive IPS technology while Dell uses a VA and suffers from it's color shifting. How about input lag while gaming? How about noise?

  • sxr7171 - Tuesday, November 4, 2008 - link

    I think its unfortunate how sometimes people will compare specs of laptops as if they were a desktop of some sort. Every form factor has a purpose and a market and that has to be considered. Every buyer has a different needs. Personally I couldn't care less how much hard drive space this thing has. If I ever bought one, it would sit in a kitchen or some little alcove. I have a home server that has all my data and it gets shared amongst all my machines. Nobody with 3 or more computers should live without NAS or a home server. Then you can have nice 64GB SSDs in each machine and have them be responsive.


    I'm very disappointed that neither has an HDMI input or something for an auxiliary digital source. Some people might want to hook up a cable box to it.

    Also I wish the Dell's speakers were optional or removable. They look ugly on an otherwise beautiful machine.
  • strikeback03 - Tuesday, November 4, 2008 - link

    Rather large for a kitchen. I'd rather a smaller touchscreen and have the system in a miniITX or smaller case, or just build it into the screen yourself. One of the grad students I work with is doing that - built a custom case with a 19" LCD at the front and the motherboard of a Eee 4G behind.
  • Zebo - Friday, October 31, 2008 - link

    top = to
  • Pirks - Thursday, October 30, 2008 - link

    What an irony
  • Griswold - Friday, October 31, 2008 - link

    Hard to believe your brainsize exceeds that of a peanut. Its been spelled out for you: the GPU does the trick, numbuts.
  • JarredWalton - Friday, October 31, 2008 - link

    I think the point is that it's surprising that Apple is the company using the higher spec GPU. What's in the MacBook Pro? Yeah, a 9600M GT. What's in the Mac Pro desktop these days? Top-end choice is an 8800 GT, with the default being an HD 2600 XT. So yes, it's surprising that their new iMac has a GPU that's actually not pathetic for gaming, whereas Dell's XPS One 24 is exactly that.
  • Pirks - Friday, October 31, 2008 - link

    Who are you talking to? Braindead PC/Windoze worshipping zombie named Griswold? What a waste of time :)

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