Entertainment and gaming desktops that come with built-in Blu-ray drive aren’t rare these days, but nettops—usually low-priced, low-power PCs that offer basic entertainment and productivity capabilities—traditionally never bothered with the high-end optical drive. Zotac just bucked the trend on their two new ZBOX Mini-PCs though; while they’re still powered by Intel Atom processors, they also come with a Blu-ray drive that turns them into full-blown (but still small) HD-playing Home Theater PCs.
After refreshing the top-end Mac Pro for the pros, Apple also updated the consumer iMac line for everyone else. They still look the same as the existing Core 2 Duo iMacs, but this new batch come with newer innards, replacing the Core 2 Duo processors with Intel’s newer Core i3 and i5 processors on the mainstream configurations and a quad-core, 2.93GHz Intel Core i7 CPU on the top-end.
Apple just updated the Mac Pro, giving the system options for running up to 12 processor cores to work via a pair of six-core 2.96GHz Xeon 5600 processors. For those who need the absolute extreme performance from their desktops, and everyone else who can afford to part with $5,000 for a kick-ass system.
MSI just announced a new partnership with the Los Angeles Dodgers, where MSI gets to slap on the Dodgers logo on the Wind Top AE2220 all-in-one desktop and on the 10-inch Wind U135DX netbook. The LA Dodgers will get their entire IT system updated with MSI systems, including Wind Tops for the Dodger Stadium front office. (But who are we kidding? No one outside of the Dodger’s payroll really cares about that part of the announcement.)
