Dell Inspiron One 19 all-in-one desktop PC

If you're looking for a home PC that won't create clutter, Dell's Inspiron One 19 is a cheap all-in-one PC with decent performance. However, we wish it was equipped with better Wi-Fi.

The Dell Inspiron One 19 desktop PC isn't the prettiest of all-in-one computer we've seen, but it has a discreet design. Unfortunately, Dell's claim of a one-cord setup is untrue, as it comes standard with a wired keyboard and mouse combo; a wireless setup costs extra.

Though the name implies a 19in screen, the Inspiron One 19's display actually measures 18.5 inches diagonally. It has a native resolution of 1366x768 pixels and a 16:10 aspect ratio, which means you'll be able to place two windows next to each other. It can display 720p content, though the small screen is hardly the best for watching high-definition media.

The Dell Inspiron One 19 has integrated stereo speakers situated at the back. Producing a total two Watts of power, they sound tinny and have a low maximum volume. You'll want to pick up a set of dedicated speakers for listening to music or watching movies.

There are plenty of ports available on the side and back of the PC; you get five USB 2.0 ports, 4-pin FireWire, Gigabit Ethernet, headphone/microphone jacks and a multi-card reader supporting SD, MemoryStick and xD formats. We aren't sure why Dell chose to include PS/2 ports or a parallel printer connection on the rear of the Inspiron One 19, given that they are obsolete and take up room that could have been used for more USB ports or a Bluetooth module.

The integrated 802.11b/g Wi-Fi is suitable for small homes, though we would have preferred the newer 802.11n standard, which would let you place the PC farther from a wireless router.

Dell offers the Inspiron One 19 all-in-one desktop PC in two hardware configurations, with a choice of either an Intel Core 2 Duo E5300 processor (clocked at 2.6GHz) and 2GB of DDR2 memory, or $200 more for an E7500 CPU with 4GB of memory. We tested the cheaper configuration, which produced reasonable performance given the price tag.

The PC also comes with Intel GMA x4500 integrated graphics and a 500GB hard drive — enough space for your photos and music with some videos. The drive offers 451GB of usable space, with a recovery partition taking up the remainder.

Dell ships a 64-bit version of Windows 7 Home Premium with the PC, which will let you take full advantage of the full 4GB of memory; a 32-bit version would only use a maximum of 3.2GB RAM.

Our synthetic WorldBench 6 benchmark suite failed to deliver an overall score, but the Inspiron One 19 performed capably in each individual test. It was marginally slower than the similarly specced Lenovo ThinkCentre A70z in the majority of our tests, though was a better performer when running office applications and when multitasking between a Web browser and encoding media. These results, combined with our Blender, iTunes encoding and 3DMark06 tests, show that Dell's entry-level all-in-one is suitable for most uses around the home, though its poor graphics adapter makes it unsuitable for games.

The Dell Dock software would suit touch-screen PCs, but is useless on the Inspiron One 19.

The Dell Inspiron One 19 isn't as cluttered with software as HP's all-in-one PCs; you get CD burning software, along with McAfee anti-virus and a 60-day trial of Microsoft Office 2007. There's a Wi-Fi configuration application that thankfully doesn't get in the way of Windows' own utility. We were confused by the inclusion of Dell Dock, however. It's similar to the dock launcher found in Mac OS X. If the computer had a touch screen, we wouldn't mind, but on the Inspiron One 19 it is a less useful alternative to Windows 7's taskbar.

The Inspiron One 19 is reasonably powerful and reasonably priced, making it a good choice for students who need something basic to do their homework on.

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