Shuttle SD50XB Touch Screen Barebone with Atom 330 Dual Core processor Review

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(More customer reviews)Bill Gate said that the tablets will be the future of computing. iPod proved it. Oxymoron thing for him to say just as is my title. Heart of tablet is the touchscreen and in future all device will be interactable. It just was too expensive to do it so far. Shuttle X50 is one of the first that makes it somewhat affordable. There are better Touchscreen PCs but so far this is the least expensive entry into that realm. Let me least its inadequacy.

1. CPU. It uses Dual core Atom. This is my first Atom and I am genuinely impressed by the capability of the 330. It ran 2 instances of WoW which my laptop with Core2Duo T7200 barely managed to do. It is incredibly efficient processor with hyperthreading. It does that while sipping around 40Watts which includes the power for the display. When I enabled voice recognition, CPU started to struggle. So processor is just enough for light work not much more. But this inadequacy enables 40Watt power consumption which translates to 24/7 operation of this PC on my bed side with one of the lowest electrical usage. My main workstation sips 210 Watts, idling. Low cooling requirement means very low noise. My head sleeps 2 feet away from it without a problem.

2. Display. Oh, the display sucks. It has one of the worst viewing angle I have ever seen on an LCD. I had to replace the stand so I can angle the LCD correctly to view anything. But once I was able to angle it which you can not do with stand that comes with it, it is just adequate enough to do light work or watch a DVD quality video. The included stand is like the picture stand. You have to replace it with tilt and swivel VESA mount otherwise, this PC is useless.

3. Sound. Little lousy speaker it has and the amplification of it is just ridiculous. You can barely hear it in a quiet room. If someone talks you can't hear well. Microphone is quite a joke too. You can gain 30db from the control panel and without it microphone can't catch anything. But with 30db gain, you can use it for Skype in very quiet room. 3 audio jacks can be converted to 5.1 output. I have mine hooked up to 4.1 around my bed post. Thumbs up. My nighty movie sounds pretty good and MediaMonkey lullabies my bed.

4. Video. It is equivalent to any cheese webcam that comes with netbooks. Pretty lousy but most webcams are pretty lousy. If the room is well lit, you can use it to video conference. It works.

5. Hard drive. I installed 500gb HD for around $80. It does not have any expansion capability other than the usb ports. I initially bought it as a server. ;) 500gb ran out long time ago. Adding external USB drive is next option and that makes the whole thing stationary which is not a good thing.

6. Graphic. It runs DVD fine. It runs some 720p rip fine. 720p is problem. It won't do 1080p. It did run 2 instances of WoW which was surprising.

7. Memory. This is a good news. The device is not neutered. You can install 4GB of ram total which is adequate for most of your need.

8. Touch Screen. Touch screens are expensive. So I didn't have much expectation. You can barely pick out the menu bar on the windows with your finger. That's good enough. It takes a concentration but you can bring up the tray applications. Good enough. If you want stress free access to things you will want to run media center like applications that gives you big buttons. I manage fine with this barely adequate touch screen.

I wake up in the morning and finger across the screen to my left I bring up my PC immediately. Ican listen to my mp3 collection or I can run video's including 60 minutes, front line from internet. I bring up my web browser and login to see my work queue. I call into my work using Skype. At night, I watch a movie. Runs it 24/7. Look at pictures using Picasa. This is my dedicated bedroom station and my 4th computers. It works wonderfully. It is a very inadequate machine. It is just inadequate enough that I can afford buy and run it 24/7. If I wanted it to be adequate it will have costed me $2500 and 200 Watt to turn it on and weigh 40 pound.

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Product Description:
The 15.6 inch intuitive touch interface puts everything at your fingertips. It offers easy and responsive operations for novices to working professionals using their finger or stylus pen. The built-in 1.3 megapixel webcam and microphone make it easy to take pictures or stream live images across the Internet in real time chatting. Designed to be elegant yet space-saving, the X50 measures only as slim as 36mm. The X50's stand can be pulled up to serve as a carrying handle. You can select bending angels from 0-180 degrees to set whatever angle works for your environment. The stand on the rear can easily be removed, unveiling four VESA mounting screw holes that can be used for mounting arms and other mounting devices from a variety of manufacturers.

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