Theres no doubt the march of technological advance inside the machine certainly impacts upon its external visual aspects. So-called legacy-free PCs are starting to appear in numbers now, and their str
Theres no doubt the march of technological advance inside the machine certainly impacts upon its external visual aspects. So-called legacy-free PCs are starting to appear in numbers now, and their strikingly small form factor is down to three main points. First, theyve got rid of the outmoded ISA expansion bus, which means smaller motherboards can be used; second, they rely largely on USB for connectivity, which again does away with a space-consuming component need; and, perhaps most importantly, they sacrifice expandability to the gods of compact design, producing what is in effect a sealed box.
Couple something like this, not much bigger than a shoebox, with a slim LCD panel and you start to get a feel for the direction that personal computing is taking. Indeed, the current raft of designer PCs on the market have done just this, often merging monitor and case into one.
Of course, the all-in-one is nothing new, but it wasnt until 1998 that the Apple iMac put the emphasis on design. It broke the mould in many ways, re-introducing the concept of all-in-one to the mainstream market. But the main reason for its success, and consequently the revival of the commercial fortunes of Apple, was the bold design that broke away from the beige box norm both in colour and shape - something thats not been lost on IBM, of all companies
If anyone has built a reputation on beige boxes its IBM, but now black is the new beige as far as Big Blue is concerned, and the NetVista X40i proves how aesthetically appealing a PC can be. As an all-in-one desktop machine, it features a digitally driven 15in LCD screen, a 1GHz Pentium III, 20GB of storage space and 128MB of SDRAM ; and a hidden panel containing floppy and DVD drives drops from below the screen at the touch of a button.
The limiting factor in the all-in-one equation, for the time being, is one of diminishing returns - literally. There is only so much shrinkage of core components that can be achieved before they become unsuitable for everyday use.