The All-in-One Battle: Dell's XPS One 24 vs. Apple's iMac

Input Device Wars

I talked a bit about the Dell's input devices so let's do the same for Apple's. The new iMacs ship with Apple's very compact aluminum keyboard, if you're a fan of the MacBook/Pro/Air keyboards, then you'll like this thing. The layout is obviously Mac optimized, so if you plan on using it under Windows you may find yourself frustrated that the Windows and Alt keys are switched. Personally I like the keyboard a lot, it's got a great feel to it, it's compact and it's easy to type on well. If you hate laptop keyboards however and need a more meaty feel to your keypresses, then you won't be a fan.

The keyboard is wired with a very short USB cable, designed to basically reach the USB port at the back of the iMac and go no further, it's the mouse however that has a very short cable. The Mighty Mouse, as Apple calls it, is designed to be plugged into the keyboard and thus you've got less than a foot of USB cord to work with. The Mighty Mouse is the same mouse I reviewed a couple of years back, it's got a single button but thanks to some fancy touch trickery it can behave as a two button mouse.

Mighty Mouse plugs in here

The entire surface of the mouse is a button (sound familiar?), press it down and you'll get a left click. Keep a finger on the right side of the mouse and press it down and it'll act as a right click, but note that for this to work you can't have your left finger resting on the left half of the mouse. My explanation may be a bit clumsy but using the mouse actually works pretty well, I don't really have any complaints there. The tracking precision is better than on the mouse that ships with the XPS One 24 and the tiny scroll ball is pretty sweet too.

For what it's worth, the scroll ball on the original Mighty Mouse I reviewed bit the dust within the first year of ownership; it just stopped working. I'm assuming that Apple's quality control has improved since the mouse was introduced but that may be a bit presumptuous on my part.

If you plan on gaming on this machine however, you'll need to replace the Mighty Mouse with something that has a real second button. While the Mighty Mouse is sufficient for all normal tasks, in a game where you're switching between left and right clicks a lot it's terribly annoying.

The Dell mouse needs to be replaced because of poor tracking precision and the Apple mouse would need replacement if you wanted to game on the iMac. The sad part is that neither of these tradeoffs are actually required by the all-in-one form factor, it's just a result of not thinking things through all the way. Dell has the greatest chance of fixing the problem though as Apple wouldn't bundle a Logitech mouse with its machine and there is no Apple branded mouse with two physical buttons for gamers.