Like Apple’s iMac, Hitachi’s LCD Desktop is an all-in-one unit, but it differs from the iMac in three key areas: it runs Windows, it isn’t blue, and it uses an active matrix liquid crystal display (LCD) in place of the cathode-ray tube (CRT). Unlike the iMac, it has a floppy drive, but it misses out on the built-in 56K modem the iMac includes.
Comparisons with the iMac end there. Whereas the iMac is ostensibly aimed at the home market, Hitachi has targeted the LCD Desktop squarely at upper-middle managers in technologically literate organisations. This is indicated by both the cost of the unit and the design of the port cover on the left-hand side of the machine. The cover hides an Ethernet port, provision fora VGA monitor, a serial port for connecting a printer, and two blanked off slots. You can’t leave the cover in place, however, unless you are only using Ethernet port. Users wanting a local printer or an external monitor (why?), will have to be content with leaving the cover off, because there aren’t sufficient cable exits in the port cover.
Coverless PS/2 keyboard and mouse connectors are placed on the unit’s righthand side, as are two USB ports, in addition to an old-style on/off rocker switch on the top right-hand side. This switch is supplemented by a sleep button on the machine’s fascia, making it unlikely that the Hitachi’s designers intended the computer ever to be fully powered down after it’s been fired up for the first time.
Interestingly enough, the Hitachi wasn’t designed at Hitachi’s head office in lapan. It’s more of a guerrilla design instigated by Hitachi’s office in Singapore, and as such, Hitachi Australia has an arm’s length relationship with the product’s Australian distributor. The distributor does offer a full warranty, however, eliminating the problems that often occur with grey market or unsupported imports.
The real point of interest for APC staffers was the Hitachi’s LCD display and small footprint — it easily takes up 50% of the space of a standard desktop machine, and is probably even more space efficient than having a reasonably powerful notebook computer on the desktop.
In addition to space efficiency, LCD displays have several other advantages over CRT monitors, including the lack of flicker caused by the poor refresh rates of all but the best CRTs, good display reso
lution (1,024 by 768), and lower power consumption. LCDs also eliminate the radiation associated with the electron gun that paints the picture across a CRT’s screen. In theory, LCDs should also be more environmentally friendly than a CRT, thanks not only to their lower power consumption, but also because less material is used in their manufacture.
The Hitachi’s screen is highly readable: it has a wide viewing angle and a viewing area similar to a 17in CRT display. Less impressive was the tinny sound from the tiny fascia-mounted, but plastic-obscured, speakers. The lack of a headphone jack is also a questionable omission, despite the provision for microphone input. Higher quality plastics and an improvement in some areas
of fit and finish, such as the rough shaping of the floppy slot, would also be warranted at this end of the market. Finally, Hitachi would be well advised to lose the dinky stuck-on metal “Designed for Windows” and “Intel Inside” badges that flank the bottom comers of the screen. Removable plastic decals would be more than sufficient.
The Hitachi ships with the ubiquitous Pentium II (here in 300MHz guise), but
skimps on RAM, with only 32M on board. All machines, whether corporate, SOHO or home, should ship with a minimum of 64M in this day and age. The real point, however, is that these technical specifications are more than adequate to run the types of applications — spreadsheets, word processors, mail clients and browsers — that the majority of the LCD Desktop’s intended market will throw at it.
That being the case, the real performance questions are: how viewable is the screen, and how well-designed is the corporate network and IT infrastructure? In reality, machines like the Hitachi are NC/PC hybrids that bring
together the best of both the thin and fat client worlds: they give end users the degree of control and data ownership that years of PC use have instilled, but also facilitate greater utilisation of centralised corporate data and infrastructures.
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