Detailed images of the builds are scarce, but I managed to scrounge up some media on a few of the more interesting projects. Check out the contest page for details on all of the winners. [Intel]

Maybe we'll finally see a Zing now. [WSJ]

Actually, the slide-out battery isn't the only change compared to the original Seashell 1008HA (which had a non-removable battery). The keyboard on this 10-inch screen revision has gone chiclet, and there's a new VGA adapter that connects via mini-USB, and hides away in a recess underneath the netbook.

Those other standard specs I mentioned look to include 1GB of RAM, 160GB hard disk, 802.11n Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth. And if pink isn't your thing, Fudzilla also has pics of the faux crocodile skin finish in brown.

It's extremely likely this will be one of several Asus netbooks we'll see at CES in January, and also one of many using Intel's Pine Trail-M platform. We already know MSI will have a Pine Trail-based 10-inch touchscreen U150 netbook at the show. Good times. [Hardware Zone (Update: Story removed) via Netbooked]

Price

It's $80, which is about par for the gaming mouse course.

Verdict

It uses the tracking engine that's standard on all of Razer's high-end mice now, a 5600dpi sensor, as mentioned above, with a 1000Hz polling rate for 1ms response time. And, like every other major Razer mouse, it's got onboard memory for storing profiles of macros and DPI settings. These things work well, as they have on previous Razer mice, though how much you need major gun specs is really up to you.

What's different about Imperator is that it's a totally new ergonomic direction for Razer, who's previously iterated the same form factor several times over for its right-handed mice (even Mamba, their wireless mouse, uses a tweaked Death Adder shape). It feels a lot like a Logitech mouse, actually, of the MX500 ilk, to be precise.

It's more compact than the expansive DeathAdder, which you basically sprawled your hand on top of, forcing a more aggressive, and more ergonomic, grip on the mouse. I feel like it's an improvement by taking a definitive ergonomic stand, but it loses that flexibility in how you hold it, which was the real genius of Razer's previous right-handed mice, so former Razer diehards might not be keen on it.

Also new are adjustable thumb buttons—that is, they slide further up or down the mouse, so you can place them where you want. The problem is that they're too thin now, and I'd prefer simply larger thumb buttons that are just easy to hit, wherever your thumb's at. The thick, braided cable is another upgrade, replacing the thin, fragile cable Razer's historically used, bringing them up to speed with gaming mice from Logitech and SteelSeries.

What makes this my favorite Razer mouse yet is the grip, combined with the solid sensor and tracking they've used for a few mice now. Is it worth $80? My answer's the same as it always for gaming mice: If you think so.

Best-feeling Razer mouse yet

It's $80

Thumb buttons are too thin
[Razer]

Price

$250 with mixamp needed to combine chatting and surround sound.

Verdict

I still vastly prefer the convenience of Turtle Beach's wireless X41 headset, but I have to admit, the Astro A40 sounds better.
Playing Borderlands, everything from the growls of skaggs to the cadence of machine gun fire sounded richer and rounder on the A40s than my X41s. Maybe the sounds weren't always as distinct, but especially when cranking the volume on each headset, I realized the general listenability—the whole package of sound—was more pleasant with Atro's product, making me long for hearing loss. It's a difference in mid range that, while not absolutely Earth-shattering, will probably be noticeable to most in a side-by-side test.

Both headsets have extremely similar sound localization. And chatting, on both, is an equal joy.

But there's one, huge, horrible, despicable Achilles' heel to the Astro A40s. To connect the headset to an Xbox 360 (or PS3/PC), wires will invade your entire living room because the console needs to plug twice into a mixamp (the big, retro box you see in the lead photo), then the mixamp connects your headphones and controller. That's confusing, I know. Here's the full workflow:

Xbox 360 optical out and USB cord => A40 Mixamp => Headphones/Mic and Xbox 360 controller.
Ultimately, not only are you negotiating four wires for this one headset, but you'll still be tethered close to your console because of one, generally short/inflexible wire: the optical cord from your Xbox to the Mixamp (you can always opt for stereo plugs, but that sort of spoils the fun).

So while I knew the A40s sounded a bit better than my X41s, I couldn't kick back and enjoy the game in the same way. For one long cord or tight quarters PC gaming, I might opt for the A40s. For four cords sprawled across my living room, I'm sticking with the X41s—especially since they're $50+ less.

Maybe you'll feel differently.

Excellent sound

Headphones work with any 3.5mm source, too

Wiring gets obnoxious

The Basic Differences in Chips

First off, I should note that the Core i7 chip has what Intel calls a "turbo mode." That is, when it's not utilizing all of its cores, it can dynamically overclock itself up to 3.4GHz on whatever single core is in use. It can, as shown in this video, work in steps. So you get the turbo benefit when using some of the four cores in this iMac's chip, but you also get it when all cores are being partially used. For example, if four cores are running but only at a fraction of their total capacity (less then 100%), the cores can use that electrical/thermal overhead to overclock to varying degrees. This should theoretically make up for the difference between the two-core 3.06GHz chip and the hyperthreaded quad core chip at a base of 2.8GHz.

The other thing to realize about these newer Core i7 chips are that they have no northbridge—or bus—between the memory and CPU. The memory controller is built right into the processor, and there's a new tech called QuickPath interconnect which connects the cores in a point-to-point architecture. Core i7 supports triple-channel memory (which would use three banks at once), but this iMac only came loaded with two banks of RAM filled. Like our other iMac, that's a 2GB + 2GB arrangement.

Matt explains more about i7 here. (And yes, there are differences between i7 and i5, besides clock speed.)

*Note that this machine also had a faster ATI Radeon 4850 video card with 512MB of RAM (versus the 4670 card in the other iMac) which may have impacted performance in several apps. I have no idea which of these apps uses the GPU to accelerate its tasks under Snow Leopard. (For example, Preview may use it to help render JPGs faster, or it may not. Apple could not tell me. In Adobe After Effects, the Radeon series of cards apparently is not supported for OpenCL acceleration. )

Performance with Multithreaded Apps

In short, any task we tried that expressly was written to either a) take advantage of multiple cores, or, b) take advantage of multiple cores through Snow Leopard's multicore middleware, Grand Central Dispatch, were 2 to 3 times faster. (More on that here.) These results include:

• 64-bit versions of Geekbench, which focus on CPU and memory tests.
• Adobe After Effects benchmarks
• Opening 20 images of Tokyo Tower that are 2000x2000 pixels and 35MB each.

Impressive stuff, but honestly, those tests were kind of uninteresting to me. I mean, those tests don't really have any correlation to my daily computing use. So on a whim, after benchmarking, I tested Handbrake, the DVD ripping software I love. It, too, was freaking fast.

I know the app is multithreaded, but I did not know what level of optimization it was written for. I was blown away by a 3x speed multiplier with the i7. On the Core i7 iMac, it took 43 minutes to rip a DVD, Storm Riders, a surfing film from the '70s featuring Gerry Lopez (my favorite) and others. On the Core 2 Duo machine, it took 147 minutes! I know this is basically a DVD read test coupled with decoding and video conversion, but the results have me excited because this is a real task that takes my computer a long time to do, performed by a program that hasn't been revised in a year.

Performance With Single-Core Optimized Apps (Otherwise Known as Reality)

Unfortunately, there are still very few applications that take advantage of multiple cores directly or via Snow Leopard's GCD, not even video-based, let alone general purpose computing.

Photoshop CS4 on the Mac, which is not set up to handle multicore processors, showed almost less than a 3% improvement using the Driver Heaven benchmark. Basic tasks, like booting and shutdown, saw virtually none. Playing the 1080p Quicktime trailer of Avatar consistently showed that the i7 was using 3% less of its total CPU than the Core2Duo, but I wonder if that's a result of the faster graphics card kicking in using CoreCL. Xbench, the old program that does a more comprehensive job of benchmarking a system from disks to processors, showed almost no difference.

I think Xbench, which hasn't been updated in years, is a solid benchmark for that old program that you depend on but has been long abandoned or at least ignored by its developer.

These scores, again, are in relation to the top line 3.06GHz Core 2 Duo iMac we tested. Some benchmarks have come in from the web comparing the i7 to the i5. Here's one that claims a 30% jump using Geekbench. Now we know Geekbench likes and does well with more cores and is a synthetic CPU test. But if the i5 is 30% slower, and the i7 pulls even with the 3.06 GHz Core 2 Duo chip in single threaded activity—most day to day activity—does that mean the i5 is slower than the cheaper Core 2 Duo? Maybe. Probably not 30%, since Geekbench is strictly CPU/memory and likes more cores, and this stuff does not translate so literally in the real world. But we can assume the i5 will have 30% less jump from the top tier Core 2 Duos, translating into a mere 1.3X to 2X speed increase from last gen chips on programs that like cores.

Value

For the most part, in our review, I said that you should stick to the preconfigured options, upgrading to Apple's next recommended config before considering upgrades to the lower tier models. How does that advice change now that we've seen the i7? I don't know! I guess it depends if you're a betting man. If you think programs for Snow Leopard using GCD are coming, paying $200 to $500 bucks more from the top line Core 2 Duo chip for an i5 or i7 might make sense. The probability of you getting programs that can use those extra cores goes up if you are a graphics or video professional who expects to see support from Adobe, Apple, etc. (Apple already claims big jumps in Aperture that we weren't able to test.) Or if you rip a lot of DVDs! The rest of you? The Core 2 Duo stuff could be fine for today and fine for tomorrow. But the Core i7 is not worse for today and will definitely be faster tomorrow. It just costs more.

Me personally? I'd opt for the Core i7. I just might wait til the new iMacs refresh a bump and the i7 is cheaper and part of a standard build. But I'm patient like that.

[iMac Review]

Specifically, using his charts and mine, it wasn't hard to recognize the jump in the multithreaded, 64 bit results from geek bench in the categories of integer, floating point and memory streaming tests, as well as the threaded tests. (Memory tests were slightly faster, the others were drastically so.) Interesting, as the Core i5 chip is clocked at 2.66GHz and the Core2Duo iMac I tested runs at 3.06GHz.

(The turbo boost function, which overclocks the Core i5 chip to up to 3.2GHz when running non-multithreaded apps, should be kicking in performance here, too.)

Interesting, but two things to remember: Core i7 chips are coming out for the iMac shortly and will run at 2.8GHz and have hyperthreading so the 4 cores emulate 8. And there are still not many (if any at all) major OS X apps that can take advantage of Snow Leopard's multicore support. [Electronista's tests, Gizmodo's iMac Review]

Insane Graphics Card Packs 2GB Memory and Six (Yes, Six) DisplayPort Ports

Rumor has it that AMD is set to announce a new, and 100% ridiculous, flagship card: The Radeon HD 5870. The 5870, if the rumors are correct, will have 2GB of GDDR5 memory and a whopping six DisplayPort ports, not to mention dual DVI ports and an HDMI. Clock speed and GPU speed are relatively normal at 4800MHz and 850MHz, respectively. It'll require two PCI-E slots, which is reasonable considering the spec excess. It ends up here in Remainders because the only source we've seen is a post on Softpedia, and while it's certainly crazy, we're not sure how big the market is for a six-port graphics card. [Softpedia via Tom's Hardware via Crunchgear]

Volcano Prevention Efforts May Result in Volcano Eruption

Geologists working in Campi Flegrei, a caldera in Naples, Italy, are concerned about the volcano's possibility of eruption, so understandably they're doing a little drilling to figure out exactly what the risk is. Unfortunately, the seven 4-km holes they have to drill could have exactly the opposite effect from preventing an eruption—there's a distinct risk that the drilling itself could trigger an eruption, which could well wipe out the entirety of urban Naples. If they hit magma, the sudden rise in temperature would vaporize their drilling liquid, causing an explosion which could in turn trigger an eruption. It's a sexy and dangerous headline, but it winds up in Remainders because, well, the risk doesn't seem all that great: 4km wouldn't even be halfway deep enough to reach any known reservoirs of magma, so it's probably a moot point. [New Scientist via Pop Sci]

Makeshift Bike Rack Attaches to Street Signs

The CycleHook is a dual-looped piece of metal that locks securely onto pretty much any signpost, creating two sweet parking spots for bicyclists. It's a pretty good idea—I'm a cyclist, and I can confirm that most cities don't provide enough spots to lock up a bike, and sometimes traffic cops get snippy when you chain up to a signpost on the sidewalk. The problem with the CycleHook is that it's not new. Montreal, for one, has had this exact design attached to parking meters for years, and I'm sure it's not the only city to have the same thought. On the other hand, Montreal's parking spots aren't pretty pink. [Wired]

PC Built Inside a Classy-as-Hell Leather and Wood Chest

We love PC case hacks. Anything you can shove a PC into, please do it, and send us pictures. There are several inviting spaces that haven't yet been used—and this here is one of them. Rob Higardea crammed a PC into this beautiful, vintage wood and leather chest. Yeah, it's got wires hanging out the back, but from the front? Pure class. I'd love one of my own, except that much class would probably stick out in my apartment more than a slab of anonymous grey plastic. [UnPluggd]

At more than a foot long, this card requires eight- and six-pin power connectors and a equally huge rig to live in. Seriously, the folks at Alienbabel Tech said they had issues fitting this card into a full size Antec 1200 chassis. Luckily, the card they had was apparently an engineering prototype, and may shrink down slightly for retail.

When we brought you word of this card in September, pricing and release date were unknown, and that hasn't changed today. Just some additional pictures for you PC gamers to drool over as you fantasize about that six 30-inch monitor setup. [Alienbabel Tech via PC Perspective via Engadget]

People who own PCs and Macs, the category I fall into, got 15% of the vote, which was also a little higher than I expected. Make of this what you will, but the difference between the poll compared to our OS tracking graphic pictured here should indicate why we wanted to focus on your own hardware—not the computer you use at work. At any rate, the race is really still too close to call. You have time to cast your vote and help tip the scales in your favor.

Before you answer the poll, keep this in mind: work machines don't count. Presumably, you made a personal choice between a Mac or a PC for your private computer—and that is the one we want to know about.

I realize that the key reason behind all that preinstalled junk is to make a profit. After all, there are people who'll spring for subscriptions because of anti-virus nagware or purchase a full version of an application after playing around with the trial. For most of us though, we just plain take a mocking from Mac users as we hit the uninstall button over and over again.

All PC users suffer this process unless we jump through hoops like pleading with Dell or Toshiba during the ordering process, paying Sony off, or purchasing a cheap Walmart product. But now, we've finally got official agreement that the crapware doesn't belong on our PCs and a place to purchase PCs with sparkly clean installs. This is an incredible move by Microsoft, and it must've taken quite some balls for someone to propose actually going through with it. Only trouble is that we'll still see bloatware on PCs purchased from other retailers or through direct channels from makers.

So, dear Microsoft, you're doing something wonderful in your retail stores, but it needs to go one step further. Please cajole everyone else to sell PCs without the crapware, too. Pretty please. [Electronista via Crunchgear]

But First, Simplicity

This 1998 ad has Jeff Goldblum narrating that there are two physical steps to setting up an iMac. ("There's no step three!") Truthfully, they skipped the mouse and keyboard cable, though, which would bring it to 4 steps. Today, an iMac is set up using just one power cable, depending on wireless networking and bluetooth peripherals to get the rest done. So it's even simpler than it was 10 years ago. And as I said, the screen is becoming more prominent than ever.

The LCD

The 27-inch iMac's screen is the thing to focus on in this revision. It is practically as bright (and more contrasty) than any of the previous iMacs—even Cinema Displays—and it looks astounding. It's LED-driven so it comes to full luminescence immediately and takes up less power. It also has better side-to-side viewing angle as an IPS tech monitor; like the iMac 24 before it, it goes 178 degrees without much change in color accuracy or brightness. And here's the kicker: Although it has 19% more area of LCD than the old 24-incher, it has 60% more pixels. That makes it more pixel dense than any of the Cinema Displays at 109ppi. And with a 2560x1440 resolution it has 90% of the dot count of a 30-inch cinema display. All these stats are great. They sound great, and they make for a powerful picture. But the actual view of the screen leaves me with a positive—but slightly imperfect—impression.

The default brightness is a bit much, but of course you can turn it down. And the contrast is welcome; even my new 13-inch MacBook Pro looks yellowed and washed out next to it. But at this pixel density, which is sharper than my notebook, it's almost too sharp, requiring me to sit closer than I would ordinarily do with a 27 inch display. I like the feeling of crispness — 16% crisper than the last generation. But my eyes feel like the pictures are being delivered by a land shark holding a laser pointer straight into my corneas, and I can feel the strain within minutes. I would have to jack up as many font sizes as possible or sit as close as I do to my MacBook to make it work for long long periods of time. Maybe I'm just a wimp of a geek, but I've never been sensitive to these sorts of things on any sort of machinery before.

This is the iMac next to a 13-inch MBP and a Dell 2407 24-inch monitor. The iMac's screen puts both to shame in brightness and clarity.

Apple is making a big deal of the fact this screen is 16:9. I think it looks better in this wider iteration, but it's not an epic jump since the last gen was 16:10. You're losing vertical pixel count here, on both the 21.5 and 27-inch models, despite added diagonal inches. Also, the glass cover is now edge to edge, without the thin silver rim around it, on the top and sides. It's still glossy and very very reflective, despite being covered in anti-reflective coating.

I will feel guilty for mentioning this, because it's ever so slight, but I'll feel more guilty if I don't mentioning it to you: The screen, when it's white, has the tiniest bit of blotchiness to it. The backlighting is slightly uneven in my model. It had no impact on viewing quality once the screen was filled with an image other than one of pure white, so don't sweat it.

My previous comparison to the 30-inch Cinema Display wasn't for academic purposes, either. One of the most interesting features on the new iMac is that it can use its Mini DisplayPort (normally an output) as an input; that is, it can become a secondary display for notebooks or other devices. Factor in the near-identical specs to the 30-inch Cinema Display, most notably its updated LED screen, and you have absolutely no reason to buy a 30-inch Cinema Display when you can have this—but not just yet.

That's what two full sized 1080p trailers look like on this screen.

Eager to test this shit and be the first to the internet with an image of an Xbox linked into an iMac ("Worlds collide!" would be the headline, I decided), I ordered a monoprice Mini-DisplayPort-to-HDMI adapter. Unfortunately, I discovered that the inputs would not work with a PS3 or Xbox at any res, HD or otherwise. The current adapters on the market are unidirectional, I was told, and so they won't work to take HDMI sources and pipe them into the iMac. I'm sure someone is making a cable as we speak for this very abominable purpose of piping in Microsoft gaming to a desktop Mac—but it's not here yet. (New cables, by the way, will include audio, which the iMac is capable of taking through its connector and the iMac is able to display video sources up to its native resolution.) The issue is, this could take months. That's a long time, so don't buy an iMac planning to use it with a gaming console or Blu-ray player right away.

Using it with a laptop was an interesting situation. Odd, for sure, but a welcome bonus and an obvious use. Here's how it works. You plug in a Mini-DisplayPort-to-Mini-DisplayPort cable to the iMac, which must be turned on (unlike Sony's all-in-one, which works while off.) The iMac flickers for a second and the laptop's picture replaces the iMac's. Here's where it gets sort of weird. When the iMac is acting as a monitor, the keyboard and mouse are all blocked from working, except a few keys: The pause/play, FF, RR, volume controls and brightness keys all work. They won't display the typical volume/brightness/FF/whatever iconography, because you're actually still looking at your MacBook. You can actually then use your iMac as a display for one computer while listening to music on another—but why would you want to? And if you were playing a game with an Xbox, you'd be listening to the game. To toggle between the iMac and the external source, you hit Command+F2.

(*The 21.5-inch iMac is not as sharp or impressive as the 27, but a fine evolution nonetheless; see chart)

Oh, one more thing: The LED display is also thinner than the traditional panel. Even so, when combined with the extra width and height, Apple's designers are given adequate room to play with the layout and thermal properties of the iMac. Which brings us to the chassis and internals.

The Chassis

The iMac's chassis went from all plastic to aluminum and glass in 2007. The first aluminum models were stamped out in car factories because no computer factories could work with aluminum pieces that big. Now, the iMac has even more aluminum in them with bigger cases and a seamless wraparound back made of metal instead of the black plastic cap. Despite the loss of the slimming effect of a black plastic back, the computer's dimensions work in its favor; it's about 1mm thinner and obviously wider, so it still feels undoubtedly skinny.

Oh, and the stand is tapered by 1.1mm on its front (as is Apple's wont), to further hide volume.

Aside from the more flattering aspect ratios, the chin—one of the only giveaways that this is not just a screen but a computer—has shrunk by 22%. It looks much better, in my opinion. The case's bigger size affects its internal layout, too. Apple and iFixit brought several of these details to my attention.

The most important changes are that the GPU and CPU are placed at nearly opposite ends of the case, with their own heatsinks to throw off copious heat with three very quiet fans. (The iMac's sound profile at idle, for a stock build, is still just a whisper, less than 20db.)

Ports: The back of the case has a Mini DisplayPort, 4 USB 2.0 ports, power plug (the machine's only wire), Firewire 800, minijack/optical input and output, and Gigabit Ethernet. There's Bluetooth 2.1 EDR wireless with which the mouse and keyboard interface, and 802.11 N Wi-Fi. Although the entire case is aluminum, the antenna has been cleverly hidden in a plastic Apple logo top center on the back. Reception is a touch stronger than on my notebook.

The iChat camera and microphone (the latter of which is made up of about a dozen closely-grouped pinprick holes, like on the MacBook Pro) are situated on the top of the iMac. And despite the new model's height they sound fine (if not a touch more distant because of the height) when compared to previous models. The top mount for the microphone keeps the sound from the new, more powerful two-way speakers from interfering with it; measured using a song and SPL meter, my notebook came in at 70db and the iMac at 76db at sitting distance. Louder, richer and noticeably so than a laptop, though I didn't have an iMac 24 on hand to compare with.

The larger case allows the iMac to use four sticks of user-serviceable RAM, accessible from the bottom. (That's useful futureproofing now that OS X Snow Leopard is shipping, and programs and the OS in 64-bit can address more than 4GB at a time.)

How About Performance?

The iMac I'm testing is a 3.06GHz Core2Duo processor with 4GB of RAM and an ATI Radeon 4670 graphics. Those are decent parts but not the highest-end quad-core i5/i7 chips or ATI Radeon 4850 GPU that will ship in iMacs in November. More importantly, the machine I have here that is shipping now is about on par with higher-end, custom-order machines from the last generation. The system benchmarks I ran earlier this week indicate that everything performs practically the same. And since we don't have a Core i5/i7 machine to work with, I've included Apple's approximations of how much boost the iMac will get from those parts — obviously, many grains of salt are necessary when reading, especially when measuring value of extra CPU cores as literal multipliers when most software still can't leverage those channels efficiently.

As for 3D, Maclife has some framerate scores from Doom 3 and Call of Duty that are not by any means exact but somewhat representative of the machine I'm using today. But again, the bottom line is that this machine that I have, shipping today, is not faster than machines equipped similarly from the last generation—they're just cheaper for any given performance point.

But again, even if you wait for the higher end machines, there's no guarantee you'll be able to access most of that extra power. Snow Leopard hasn't seen many apps, besides the ones that ship with it that can take advantage of its multicore CPU and GPU technologies. Programs will come, but immediate speed gains aren't guaranteed here if you buy the quad-core machines.

Here's an exception: Those Core i5/i7 chips are also clocked slower than the Core 2 Duo chips on the lower-end machines, but have the ability to run single core applications at a greater clock speed. Since all four cores won't be burning, the chip uses the spare electricity and the extra thermal overhead to dynamically and automatically overclock the core that is working: The i5 chip goes from 2.66GHz to 3.2GHz and the 2.8GHz i7 chip goes to 3.46GHz (with 4 cores that run hyperthreaded for up to 8 virtual cores.)

Sounds fast, but we'll dive into deeper tests in November. For now, you should be aware that if your desktop is less than 18 months old, you'd be somewhat silly to upgrade before the highest end chips from this generation of iMac are out.

What Else You Got?

The iMac replaces its old mouse with the new Magic Mouse, with a multitouch surface and 360 degree scrolling and swiping, almost like the gestures you find on a Macbook trackpad. I've said it before: I primarily use Laptops because I love trackpads. The gestures, fingertip precision and proximity to the keyboard make it a must have, and this mouse fixes some of those issues. (*Jason Chen reviewed the mouse and liked it but it was not without flaws. Read that if you're considering buying an iMac, because it's the only option Apple offers.)

The one detail I found problematic specifically with the Magic Mouse as it pertains to the 27-inch iMac is that even when the pointer sensitivity is set to the highest level, a swipe of the wrist at a moderately fast speed goes only 2/3 across the giant pixel landscape. Only by whipping my hand across my mouse pad can I trigger enough mouse acceleration to get across the screen. They should turn up the sensitivity, frankly. Software update please!

The keyboard is also changed, going from the old wired keyboard, which was stamped out of the screen cutout of the chassis, with a wireless Bluetooth model. Apple states that the keyboard's narrow profile makes it a better fit next to the mouse. I think it also makes sense as a remote control for the computer from afar when watching media, since this is the biggest iMac ever that doubles as a monitor. But it looks a little small and out of proportion with the machine itself, since the Mac got wider and the keyboard got shorter. (Correction: The keypad-less change happened last revision. I just miss that numeric pad keyboard's width from the first generation of Aluminum iMacs. It seemed to fit perfectly.)

Oh, the white plastic remote that used to ship with all the laptops, AppleTV and iMacs has been replaced by an elliptical, aluminum remote with black rubber buttons. It's longer, and shaped like an iPod nano but no longer comes with the iMac. It costs $19. I think when you buy a computer that is this expensive, they should THROW IN THE DAMN REMOTE.

Competitive Check

There are other all-in-ones from PC makers, but at the moment, none as large or high-res as the iMac 27. The ones from Sony (like the L) and HP have various extras like IR touchscreens, glowing monitor bodies, TV tuners and Blu-ray drives. Some are pretty decent, like the Touchsmart we just reviewed. If these things matter to you and you are not married to the Mac platform, you might consider them. But that touchscreen functionality is still half-baked, so don't do it for the groping potential.

Value

The sweet spot is the $1200 21.5-inch config. But don't upgrade that model beyond base without seriously considering the big bad 27-incher for $1700. And don't upgrade that one at all without considering the quad-core models; both look very promising at $2000 or $2200. Basically, the custom builds are not a great value until you get to the quads. Go cheapest, 27, or quad. But cautious folks will wait on the quads 'til we test them.

There's another angle here, too. Again, comparing the 27-inch iMac to the old as hell 30-inch Cinema Display makes those standalone monitors look like a pretty bad value when it costs only $100 more for just 10% more pixels—and, hey, it's also not a computer.

Nerds, Sheathe Thy Wallet If You Can

Although the quad core benchmarks aren't here yet, I think you've got enough information here to make an adult decision on whether to go cheap or double your price for something faster and bigger. It's not like those new chips will be slower. But waiting a month on a new internal layout, design and screen is a great way to let Apple shake out whatever inevitable hiccups are there at the start of a new run. Plus, if Snow-Leopard-specific apps make their way to market (hello, <Handbrake!) and some performance scores come out in the meantime, hey, cool.

Big beautiful screen is super high res and bright.

Chassis design evolving to new heights of beauty; less chin.

Faster parts not out yet; current components available in previous generation.

No Blu-ray player, touchscreen or other things that aren't important to me, but may be important to you. Maybe.

AMD said they expect less of an increase in Q4 revenues due to "the big build we've seen of PCs in anticipation of the Win 7 launch." Read: most PC makers aren't going to be ordering too many components from AMD for a little while. Apparently that comment has led investors to think this is an industry-wide phenomenon, that PC makers have all the inventory they need and more.

Without knowing how widespread the effect is, let's assume there are a ton of PCs out there. In that case, what will likely happen is the manufacturers will just sit on their inventory longer, and component suppliers will receive fewer orders. Hopefully, though, they'll feel the need to turn around that inventory quickly, which would mean some awesome deals could be on the horizon. [All Things Digital]

Image via Jfaneves

The price you pay is that it's got a single hi-speed USB port instead of a pair, which has been de rigeur on gaming keyboards lately. And of course, it's got space for 36 macros. It's $80, and works with PC or Mac. [Logitech]

This initial $900 Z5610 also lacks the built-in Blu-ray drive or TV tuner we saw in our April preview. If you're after an all-in-one that doubles as a TV, you might be better off looking at HP's TouchSmart 600 or Sony's Vaio L. The $1400 Gateway ZX6800 has a TV tuner, but not Blu-ray.

In terms of looks, the Z5610 holds its own. An ambient lighting strip between the display and sound bar illuminates the keyboard in the dark, and the PC's chrome legs create room to stow away the keyboard and tilt the display 10-20 degrees.

The rest of the specs are pretty basic, though: 4GB DDR3-800 RAM (expandable to 8GB), 320GB hard disk, 512MB ATI Mobility Radeon HD4570 graphics, SuperMulti optical drive, 6 USB slots, and one eSATA port. You also get 802.11n and Gigabit networking, plus a bundled wireless keyboard and mouse.

Underpowered, yes. But not bad for the price. The Aspire Z5610 arrives sometime before Christmas for $800.

Between this quarter and the next, we can finally pass Dell

Not only that, they think they can "breach the gap" with HP as well. [WSJ]

A Brief History Lesson

The original MX500 is the sliced bread of mousing ergonomics: The form factor is so good Logitech won't fuck with it more than six years and countless iterations later. The perfectly balanced ergonomic arch and thumb groove precisely straddle the line between suggestive and aggressive, so it feels just right, like Zach Morris.

The MX500 evolved into gamier, glossiers variants with boosted tracking engines, the MX 510 and still available MX518. That, in turn, gave us the original laser-based G5, which saw the loss of a thumb button through leprosy, and had a janky scroll wheel. Logitech fixed it with another take on the G5, adding back the missing thumb button and giving us a scroll wheel that worked, making the mouse great again. That brings us to the G500.

Let's Start with the Good

Like I said, there's a reason Logitech has kept the basic MX500 silhouette around for so long, through at least six other mice: It just works. There are some minor tweaks with the G500, which actually feels slightly more symmetrical, with a wider but less pronounced thumb groove that flows more smoothly into the body of the mouse, but it's basically the same. It's a little more texturally vivid than I'd prefer, with sides that feel like rubberized sandpaper for gripping, but I got used to it fast enough.

The laser engine inside now pushes 5700dpi, or exactly 100dpi more than Razer's latest laser engine. Logitech peeing on the pissing match, in other words. It also polls at 1000Hz, the same speed as Razer's sytem. (FWIW, I couldn't discern any difference between Microsoft's 500Hz polling and Razer's 1000Hz in actual gaming sessions.) The G500's tracking and accuracy is excellent, both on cloth pads and my fake wood desk.

Crippling Flaws

The reason I dragged you through a brief tour of Logitech mouse history is because Logitech repeats it with the G500. The original G5 screwed up on the thumb buttons and scroll wheel, and the G500 manages to screw that up spectacularly too.

It's the first gaming mouse MX500 descendant Logitech has graced with the hyper-scroll tech that's been in its high-end consumer mice for a while—it's got a toggle button that lets you pick between regular clicky (but still speedy) scrolling or the hyper-infinite scroll, where one flick of your finger spins the scroll wheel almost forever, shooting you down a million lines in Excel in half a second. Which is great, if you spend a lot of time in Excel or zipping through web pages—not so great if you're flicking through a handful of weapons in Left 4 Dead. Even when it's not in hyper mode, the scroll wheel's still pretty fast and loose—though that's something that you can mitigate with careful scrolling.

What really murders the scroll wheel, though, is that middle-clicking is an act requiring damn near surgical skill. Half the time you attempt to middle click, and you think you have, you've actually just left- or right-scroll clicked. Which is not the same command. Meaning, if you've mapped middle click as a lightning fast shortcut to get back to your main gun after you've tossed out a proxy mine, you're gonna get shot in the face trying to pull out your gun.

The thumb buttons are almost as bad. Instead of two clearly distinguishable buttons, we've now got a nearly seamless button strip that actually contains three buttons for you to press. And, just like the scroll wheel, you'll go to click one button, and wind up hitting a different one, particularly the new "middle" thumb button. You don't know how many people got backstabbed by Spies in Team Fortress 2 after I tried to hit the forward button to yell at them via voice chat but tapped the wrong button.

Don't Buy

Gaming gear, in theory, should be all about precision. That's why Logitech tells us the dots per inch the mouse's sensor can handle and how fast and how often the mouse gets data from the laser sensor. That's why I can adjust the dpi rating on the fly. That's why Logitech includes weights with the mouse, so you can even adjust how much it weighs, down to the gram. Yet two buttons that people use a lot are huge failures in precision. Whole buttons. That negates basically everything else that's good about the mouse, which is a lot, like the heavy braided cable, or built-in profile storage, so you don't have to redo your settings everytime you take it to a different computer.

So, my advice? If you're dedicated to Logitech, wait for the next G500, or the surely inevitable wireless variant. Logitech will probably fix the problems in the revision, just like they did before. Or, just stick with the actually good G5, which is $20 cheaper, at $50. You don't really need 5700dpi anyway. If you're open to other mousemakers, in the same price range, I'd suggest Razer's DeathAdder, which recently got beefed up with Razer's newer tracking engine and a less flimsy cable, Microsoft's wireless SideWinder X8, or SteelSeries' relatively frill-free Ikari.

Classic Logitech ergonomics still great

Crazy fast sensor tracks really well

Scroll wheel design is not great for games

Thumb buttons completely screwed up

And, even if you'd rather buy a pre-made box—built-in Time Machine support for Macs is a good reason to go with HP's, for instance—they've got some essential add-ins and performance tweaks to get the most out of your Home Server. [Maximum PC]