The All-in-One Battle: Dell's XPS One 24 vs. Apple's iMac
by Anand Lal Shimpi on October 30, 2008 3:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Systems
Blu-ray Support
The XPS One model Dell sent me features a built-in Blu-ray drive, a clear advantage over the competing iMac - provided that you actually have a Blu-ray collection. For what it's worth, when playing a movie the Blu-ray drive is actually quieter than when the HDD is being accessed, not to beat a dead horse or anything.
Blu-ray playback is handled by the NVIDIA GeForce 9600M GPU in the system, so CPU utilization on my test sample's Core 2 Quad Q8200 remained at a sub 15% level the entire time I watched Casino Royale while writing this review. While CPU utilization was nice and low, sometimes the application would skip frames when decoding a movie. I informed Dell of my issue and they're working on reproducing the problem, I noticed the dropped frames on Casino Royale and Transformers, although Batman Begins worked just fine. See a common trend? Allow me to illuminate the situation. Both Casino Royale and Transformers use the H.264 codec, Batman Begins is a VC-1 title. This appears to be a NVIDIA driver or an application issue unfortunately newer drivers weren't available at the time of publication, so we'll have to wait on Dell to resolve the problem, although I'm quite convinced it's a H.264 decoding issue.
We've already looked at NVIDIA's Blu-ray playback quality and performance and its role in the XPS One is no different. Despite NVIDIA's excellent support for 24p playback, the XPS One's display isn't capable of a 24Hz refresh rate so you'll see some jitter when watching 1080p/24 movies, but this is the case on most consumer level displays so we can't be too picky. Not to mention that the XPS One isn't really intended to be a HTPC replacement, its Blu-ray support is simply a nice feature.
Blu-ray application support is provided by Cyberlink's PowerDVD DX and is loosely integrated into Windows Media Center, selecting the Blu-ray disc option from within Vista Media Center (VMC) simply launches the standalone PowerDVD DX application. PowerDVD DX is hardly the best Blu-ray player in the world; you have no ability to configure the application's settings, upon closing the application you have to manually get back into the VMC interface and I even ran into a problem where I couldn't get the menu controls to work anymore when watching Transformers, requiring a full reboot. None of these are Dell-specific problems, but just issues with the Cyberlink player in general.
Dell uses a Panasonic UJ-225S drive, which can read and write to both single and dual layer DVDs and Blu-ray discs. BD-R/BD-RE discs can be written to at 1X or 2X depending on if they are single or dual layer discs.
All in all the Blu-ray drive is a nice feature of the top end model, though not entirely necessary it is an option you simply can't get on the competing iMac. Blu-ray discs are increasing in popularity and it never hurts to be able to play back all types of content, although personally I'm not sure if I'd opt for $2299 version simply for Blu-ray support.
Integrated TV Tuner
The XPS One, unlike the iMac, ships with an integrated analog/ATSC tuner which does give it a convenience advantage over its competition, especially if you're going to use it in a dorm room or other locale where you need cable TV access but would rather not have a separate TV setup. Note that there is no support for CableCARD, so all you're going to get are unencrypted HDTV channels on this tuner. Unfortunately the software setup on the XPS One 24 wouldn't allow me to tune to anything other than analog cable channels, so I couldn't test the supposed QAM functionality of the AverMedia A317 combo tuner in the box. It did work with analog cable though.
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nitrous9200 - Friday, October 31, 2008 - link
There will be an option to show the text next to the program icons in 7, but obviously it will be turned off by default. Of course it's really quite easy to differentiate between programs by the icon since they're usually so different.strikeback03 - Monday, November 3, 2008 - link
Yeah, but if you have several instances of the same program open (for example, I have 2 firefox right now, and multiple Explorer windows is common) then icons won't cut it. I couldn't care less how pretty the interface looks, so long as it is effective at conveying what is going on and allowing me to interact with it.sxr7171 - Tuesday, November 4, 2008 - link
No big deal. You will get a choice which is the downside of Macs. It's either "our way" or the "highway" in the Mac universe which is my big issue with Mac.Wolfpup - Friday, October 31, 2008 - link
I've long felt Windows' interface is considerably superior to OS X. Honestly I'd take 98's interface over 10.5, let alone XP or Vistas. It's really customizable, and...well I could go on and on about the things I prefer.(Two huge ones off the top of my head, you can edit files and folders from a save dialog box, and create new documents where you want them in the file system rather than having to open a program and navigate that way.)
Certainly I vastly prefer the quick launch bar and start menu to the dock.
Expose is the only interface element I wouldn't mind ripped off and put in Windows (though even there there's sort of a version of it in Vista).
slashbinslashbash - Friday, October 31, 2008 - link
Hmmm... how long have you been reading AnandTech? I've been here a good 7-8 years now, and I have grown to have an almost personal relationship with Anand's reviews. I know his thought processes, and he has kept a consistent POV over the years. Look back to 2004-2005 when he got his first Macs and somewhat reluctantly concluded (after all, he had built his site's reputation as a PC hardware review site) that he liked OS X better than Windows. Ever since then, the push has been on. Anand has grown to be more and more of a "Mac guy" and AFAIK largely uses Macs to conduct his day-to-day work. It's to the point now that I think of Anand as my go-to guy for Mac reviews and analysis (as he and his site have always been my go-to site for PC hardware reviews), if only because his voice has been so consistent and I know that he will tell me what he really thinks, and more importantly, that I know how he thinks and I know that he usually thinks like I do. Editorial consistency is so important and usually overlooked.In any case, being surprised at the "obvious pro-Mac OS X bias" shows you to be a pretty non-observant AnandTech reader, IMO. It is no surprise to me at all, and in fact I felt that Anand gave pretty fair shakes to the Dell, which copied the iMac and OS X to an embarrassing degree (the Dock is such a blatant ripoff! And the "Eject" graphic! Even the input/output ports are totally Mac-like.).
As for your criticisms of OS X, "knowing what is running" is far less important on OS X than on Windows anyway. To quote from Anand's 4/13/06 review of the original MacBook Pro: "When I started using OS X I initially hated the idea that closing all the windows of an application wouldn't actually close the application itself. However the more I used OS X, the more I realized that I didn't want to close the applications I used a lot; I wanted their windows out of the way but I wanted the ability to switch to them without waiting on the hard drive to load up that program again. Leaving just about every application I use open all the time and not having to worry about my system getting slow over time was a bit of a new experience for me, but it was a welcome one." I am the same way. I pretty much never quit programs completely on my Macs. It just doesn't make any difference in performance. When they are running in the background, the memory is managed well enough by OS X that they do not intrude on what I am doing.
"Differentiating between the numerous windows I have open" -- nothing does this better than Exposé.
"a central place to go for all your programs" -- OS X does a much better job of this with the Applications folder and the way that Applications themselves are folders in a sense. You click on them to open the application, but all the files and components that actually make up the application are enclosed in the folder that is the visible manifestation of the application in the Applications folder. To give a concrete example: I have an application called "Firefox" in my Applications folder. To open Firefox, I double-click on it. But if I right-click (I have a MS wireless mouse and keyboard -- I'm not a bigot) and select "View Package Contents", I see that this Firefox application is really just a container with a bunch of files and folders within it; chrome, extensions, dictionaries, etc. All of the confusing files and folders that seem to spread their way across multiple locations on Windows confine themselves nicely to that one pseudo-folder on OS X. No .dll files in strange places! No configuration settings hidden in the Registry! Just one place, and if you want to get rid of the program, there's no need for a complicated "Uninstall" process that scours your hard drive for odd remnants, you just drag the whole thing to the trash and be done with it! Wow, what a concept!
As for Linux's "central place to go for all your programs" -- don't get me started on the multitudinous locations of various ./bin folders (/usr/bin, /usr/local/bin, ~/bin, /bin, here a /bin, there a /bin, everywhere a /bin /bin.... I've got a $PATH that is several lines long, and different on every machine that I log into).
sxr7171 - Monday, November 3, 2008 - link
Huh. I used to ask Mac users why they did thought Mac was better in some ways and I many would mention the whole process of installing and uninstalling apps as a drag and drop thing. I never understood why they made such a big deal out of that because I thought dragging and dropping was analogous to clicking the install file.Not until you explained did I realize why they always bring that point up. Honestly now that I understand it, that is pretty darn amazing. It just makes sense. I hate hunting through local settings, application settings, the registry etc.
xeutonmojukai - Friday, October 31, 2008 - link
Um, I'm writing this on my MacBook right now, and trust me, this thing has a much more in-depth task manager than any Windows computer I've ever seen, and even allows you to restart the Finder program (or Main UI, basically) without restarting the computer.I find that my computer can go plowing into the great unknown reaches of the internet and come out clean, without using a firewall or any sort of protection program. It runs as fast as it did four years ago when I bought it.
I also use 10.4, and I've seen a lot of the new things from Leopard in my install of Ubuntu, and I don't need them, honestly. I'm fine with what Tiger has to offer.
Wolfpup - Friday, October 31, 2008 - link
How is Window's task manager less in depth...and you've been able to restart Explorer (ie Finder) separately from the computer in Windows since at LEAST Windows 98, if not earlier.
michael2k - Friday, October 31, 2008 - link
Windows taskbar doesn't give you a progress bar update per application?Windows taskbar doesn't tell you how many emails, IMs, or activity status in the taskbar?
All the Windows taskbar does is tell you which apps are open, which apps want your attention, and how many windows each app has open.
sxr7171 - Monday, November 3, 2008 - link
Not even liking Macs, I have to agree. Even Firefox tabs are easier to navigate and more informative with the right extensions. How many times have I wished for mouse gestures in Windows explorer? I really think Windows 7 will be fixing some of these issues. They seem to be standardizing the ways in which applications interact with the user. The fact that are are working to standardized where and how drivers are updated centrally and even use manufacturer input to build in sync and device management directly into the OS is going to make Windows 7 very easy to use and a much more consistent "mac-like" experience. Only with far more choices in hardware, software, and peripherals. The task they are undertaking is huge, but the results, if implemented correctly will be worth it.