Dell Studio Hybrid

Environmentally friendly PC lacks processing punch

HOW MUCH ARE YOU WILLING TO PAY for a green PC? Or for that matter, a green PC that comes in green, as well as black, blue, orange, red, yellow, or even bamboo? Dell is betting you'll put down about $874, the price of its new Studio Hybrid desktop, which comes with a 19-inch wide-screen LCD monitor. Whether it's worth that price to you depends greatly on your own commitment to the environment: For all of its eco-friendliness and spectrum-spanning color palette, the Studio Hybrid is otherwise fairly unexceptional as a computer.
The Studio Hybrid is most succressfull in terms of its design, which melds desktop and laptop philosophies into a uniquely unified look. It's ovoid-rectangular in shape and, laid flat, measures just 2.75x7.5x8.25 inches (HWD) inside its swappable plastic color sleeve, making it the second-small-east PC we've seen in years. (Asus's new Eee Box, which we review on p.14, is the smallest.) The optical drive (a DVD+-RW), headphone jack, USB ports, and multiformat memory-card reader are straregicaly positioned to all but disappear within the curved grooves that grace the front panel. The rear panel, if similarly compact, is more conventional in design, and it makes less of an attempt to hide the power jack (for hooking up the AC brick the Studio Hybrid uses for juice) and the host of other connections: one each for headphone, microphone, Ethernet, S/PDIF digital audio, four-pin FireWire, DVI monitor, and HDMI, and three USB. Our configuration also came with built-in 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi.
As the port selection suggests, the Studio Hybrid is aimed at general-purpose, living-room usage, so it's not destined to satisfy those looking for top-tier performance or inside-and-out customizability. There are, for example, no drive bays or expansion slots, even the half-height variety; though you can open the system by removing a screw, the cramped interior isn't easy to navigate. And although the 2.1GHz Core 2 Duo T8100 processor, 2GB of DDR2 RAm, 250GB hard drive, and Intel 965 Express integrated graphics can power the Windows Vista Home Premium operating system, they're not capable of much more.
Aside from 3D (an unimpressive 525 in Futuremark's 3DMark06) and gaming - a terrible 4,6 frames per second (fps) in Company of Heroes at 1,280x1,024-the Studio Hybrid acquitted itself decently in our performance tests. But other, cheaper computers have done better recenlty: The Gateway GT5692, priced at just $549.99 (with a monitor), trounced the Dell in our Cinebench 10 (5,040 versus 4,289) rendering test, as well as in 3DMark06 (1,480) and Company of Heroes ( 13,1fps). THe Gateway did take slightly longer, however, to make it through our Windows Media Encoder (7 minutes and 33 seconds, compared with the Dell's 7 minutes and 19 seconds, compared with the Dell's 7 minutes and 19 seconds) and iTunes conversion (4 minutes and 18 seconds versus 4 minutes and 49 seconds) trials. The $749.99 ZT Affinity 7225Xi didn't come with a monitor; but it bested both systems i nall our tests.
What the Studio Hybrid has that other machines don't is its G (for green) factor-something we can see being a tipping much tinier thatn traditional desktop (Dell say it's 80 percent smaller than average), the Studio Hybrid also suck up very little energy (70 percent less than full-size desktops, again according to Dell) and comes with minimal paper documentation and packaging-all of which is up to 95 percent recyclable. You even get a system-recycling kit to make it easier to dispose of your old PC properly. (We're not sure how environmentally responsible the system's colored plstic covers are, but no matter.)

But will all that -or any of the Studio Hybrid's other features-appeal to mainstream consumers? With lower-leaning pwerformance even at this price, cheaper models (the series starts at $499) won't be especially attractive, and the system's deficiencies and limitations will become only more noticeable at higher prices. Sure, the green overtones are nice, but we're not sure there's a compelling reason for most people to sacrifice more of their own green to get such a poor selection of features. -Matthew Murray.
source: Compute Shopper October 2008.
www.dell.com