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Is The Hip-E For You And Me? |
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Written by RotoSequence
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An objective analysis of the Digital Lifestyles teen oriented PC. The
answer to the heading is no. From what has been shown already by
Digital Lifestyles, the Hip-E is neither worth your time or money.
Behold Digital Lifestyle's new PC; the Hip-e. Designed for
teenagers who are tired of dealing with their generic PCs that take up
tons of space and cost way too much, it is touted as the best choice
for teenagers who want a hip new PC to fit in with their hip lifestyle;
Quite a statement to be made about a system that is woefully
underpowered and filled to bursting with what looks to be baseless
hype. Everything that makes up this PC screams out trend, gimmick, and
marketing for profit rather than actually making something beneficial
or useful to the teenage demographic. Why do I say this? It is because
of what they have already said about the machine.*
SPECIFICATIONS:
- Hip-e hangout Customizable Interactive Experience
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17" Widescreen Ultra High Res LCD (1400 x 900)
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Full-Screen TV Experience with Recording and Electronic Programming Guide and Remote Control
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Desk or wall mount
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beatbox Detachable Speaker System with Maxx Bass Technology
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nodeboard: includes Wireless Keyboard, Mouse and Docking Station
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Wireless Keyboard with Internet Hot Keys, Media Keys, and Customizable Skins Palm rest
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Wireless Mouse With Translucent Base
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Docking Station with 8-in-1 memory card reader and docking bays for playme and readme
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DVD Player/CD Burner Drive
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1.5 GHZ Intel Pentium M processor
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High Performance Video
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512MB SDRAM Memory (expandable to 2GB)
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120GB Hard Drive
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6 USB Ports
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FireWire Port
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Broadband-ready with built-in Ethernet and 802.11 Wireless
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Integrated Microphone
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Customizable Skins
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Sweeptakers LED for contests and promotions
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Standard Software includes: Microsoft® Windows® XP, Microsoft Office Student and Teacher Edition Trial, AOL Instant Messenger
*specifications pulled off of hip-e's website
The first thing that is extremely evident with all this is their
extremely ridiculous emphasis on "customizability." The machine is
designed to be a big piece of eye candy with tons of frivolous features
that are obvious grabs at making more money from people who want to
change the stock look. Their emphasis on features like the "Sweepstakes
LED" is a bit disturbing. They are pulling your attention away from
what this machine is actually capable of in a very deliberate manner.
More than half of their specifications are related to how it looks so
"hip" and "stylish."
The hardware powering this machine is also none too impressive. With a
1.5 Ghz Pentium 4M, the processor is going to cause a lot of
bottlenecking, especially if the person who uses this PC likes to do
things like run AIM, burn a CD, Surf the internet and play music at the
same time. For a machine designed to cater to teenager's wants, they
certainly equipped this machine with a weak processor. Must have been a
design oversight. Or perhaps a blatant attempt to save money on part
costs while charging you extra; only time will tell. With 512 megs of
RAM that is said to be SDRAM, they are either REALLY behind on
technology or made a nasty typo. 512 megs of RAM isn’t that bad.
However, if it actually IS SD-RAM, you are losing a terrific amount of
money to a legacy product. SD-Ram is only manufactured in a few
factories. If it is laptop memory, the cost is looking to be even more
excessive. This machine screams out "lack of power" all over the place.
The computer's graphics are called "High Performance Video." Based on
their claims of allowing you to capture video and watch TV, it is
assumable that they are using an All In Wonder card by ATI, as they are
the main supplier of those parts. But if it were decently powerful
graphics, you think they would have said which graphics chip they have
in it if it were something worth bragging about. From the sounds of
things, they didn't put anything very good in there.
Oversights in this computer are to be found everywhere it seems. These
flaws in design include the 120 gigabyte Hard Disk Drive and
CD-Burner/DVD Drive combo. The PC is designed to capture Video off of
your TV, store MP3s, and games, according to the hip-e website. With
only 120 gigs, that hard drive space is going to go away fast. Without
a DVD Burner, it's going to be ridiculously difficult to save the
content that you recorded, since most teenagers aren't going to want to
burn a CD for every episode of Dharma and Greg they record. It would
have been a good idea to give the machine a full DVD burner. Or perhaps
a bigger hard drive. More oversights follow. Visuals are supplied via a
17" widescreen monitor at 1400x900 pixels. That is quite high
resolution for such a small screen. Most people will have to look
pretty darn close to their monitor in order to see everything clearly,
unless they want to make the text and icons obtrusively large when
working on papers, surfing the internet, or even looking at the
desktop. High resolution LCDs often have low refresh rates. It is
unlikely that the response time on this thing is any better than 25ms;
if it is, you would think they would say so. This machine is being
aimed at a demographic that typically knows their tech. If they aren't
talking about it, it's likely that they don't have it. Then again, if
it does, they aren't giving teenagers much credit to their
intelligence. Overall, this combination of parts seems to be nothing
but a marketing gimmick. If you think about what this machine is touted
for, it soon becomes evident that the parts they put into this machine
are inadequate. This is likely to become even more poignant if anyone
tries to play an advanced 3D game like a fist person shooter or the
popular racing game “Need for Speed Underground," which takes a
significant toll on all but the most powerful graphics cards. Since
these are all popular pass-times for teenage boys, you would think that
they would have put in a graphics card that is powerful enough to run
them good. I don’t think they have it since they aren't talking about
it.
Their included software leaves a bit to be desired. They are only
giving the trial to the newest Microsoft word, which people commonly
use to do their homework, reports, and other items that students need
their PC for. With how much this machine costs, the consumer deserves a
full software package; not just a trial version of an absolute
necessity.
The people at Digital Lifestyle are either not thinking straight or
don't care. All the tech in this computer is either in it for bragging
rights or to appear trendy. This PC looks to be nothing more than an
attempt to latch on to what is popular at the moment, much like Apple's
Imac was in 2000. With the wallet hit you are going to take for buying
one of these, you would be far better off building a PC of your own. If
you do the math, you will find that you can get a PC with much more
power-almost twice what this PC offers-with a Shuttle SFF barebones
system with either an Intel Pentium 4, Athlon XP or possibly even
Athlon 64 that will do everything that the hip-e pc does better for the
same price - and that's including a 20.1" Viewsonic VP201b 16ms
response time monitor and an All in Wonder 9800 pro 128 meg video card.
It is evident that this machine is nothing but an attempt to milk the
cash cow of the teenage demographic for as little investment as
possible, and is therefore not worth getting at all. Unfortunately, I
foresee many sales of this computer, with the promotions by pop stars
and other extreme marketing. Perhaps they should invest some of their
advertising funds into getting better parts.
Everything I say should be taken with a grain of salt, as it is just
speculation at this time. However, based on what we have seen so far,
this is likely to be the same response that other entities will be
bestowing on this computer. Unless hip-e pulls a rabbit out of its hat
and proves me wrong about this whole deal, I highly recommend that you
avoid this PC at all costs. NOTE: This article is an opinion and
nothing more; as such, you can feel free to disagree or prove me wrong.
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