Dell Studio Hybrid: Is it Any Good?

Well, Dell just released their new desktop PC a few days ago. As a loyal Dell user for years now I can say it looks pretty damn cool! I mean come on, look at this thing, it’s small which means it takes up little space and the design looks pretty sweet. But as we know the small size will really limit its power. I was searching around Dells site to see what hardware you can get with it and well, it’s not all that impressive, especially for a power user like myself. The very first thing I noticed is that it lacks any graphics power; it only comes with Intel® Integrated Graphics Media Accelerator X3100, which well, sucks, good luck gaming with this. But if you do not game at all or use no other graphics intensive applications you should be fine. Looking to get a Quad Core processor? This PC doesn’t come with that either just dual core processors for now. Also, from what I can tell it does not have any expansion slots, which is a drawback, considering it’s supposed to be a desktop. The main reason a lot of people like desktops is for their upgradability, right? This thing is designed more like a laptop with no real upgrade potential.

But most of the other components are fairly acceptable if you upgrade it from the base model, like a 320GB hard drive, 4GB of DDR2 memory, optional blue ray drive, Integrated Sound Blaster® Audigy™ HD audio, Bluetooth, and optional wireless N compatibility. All for about 1,300 bucks, with no monitor, a little more if you add a monitor in with it if needed, but you can lower the price to only 499 for the base system.

Truthfully it’s a pretty nice computer from Dell if you just surf the web and use office software, but if you use a lot of advanced applications and especially gaming this system will not get the job done. I’m sure hardcore power users will not be into this system much, we like our computers loaded with powerful high end hardware. I’d like to see Dell find some way to use Nvidia and ATI graphics cards in this thing, come on, I can get Nvidia and ATI mobile cards installed in my dell laptop, why not this?

So, in conclusion, it appears this PC is mainly for the casual computer user looking for a stylish system to show off. Looking for a more power system? You better just stick with Dell’s XPS systems for now.

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