Sony debuts dual-box HD-editing PC
One unit for you desk, one for under it
Sony has taken the wraps off a desktop system that contains not only system unit but two, one for the bulk of the PC's innards, the other for the optical drives - one of which is a Blu-ray Disc unit.
Sony's Vaio RM1N: one unit for you desk, another for under it
Aimed at HD content editors and dubbed the Vaio RM1N, the PC packs in a four-core Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 processor, 2GB of DDR 2 memory, a pair of 500GB 7200rpm SATA hard drives configured in a RAID 0 set-up for speed, and an Nvidia GeForce 8600 GTS graphics card.
The system unit has room for up to four more SATA hard disks, and there are three open PCI-Express slots capable of taking full-length cards.
The main unit also incorporates Gigabit Ethernet, which is realistically something you'd connect and leave. Not so the front-facing four USB and one four-pin Firewire ports, so you're either going to be reaching under the desk every time you want to connect a USB key or digital camera, or you're going to want the system unit on your desk too, which kind of defeats the object of the split design.
Still, the system does come with a pair of colour-coordinated speakers and a standalone jog-dial control to use with the bundled Adobe Premiere Pro 2.0 video editing software. The RM1N runs Windows Vista Business.
Available any day now, the Vaio RM1N will retail for around £2500 ($4972/€3705).
COMMENTS
Why Adobe Premiere Pro 2.0?
I have used Vegas Video and Adobe Premiere and I think Vegas is much better, and Sony owns Vegas, I can't believe that they paid to bundle Adobe with this computer.
Dillon - RAID 0 = improved performance
Taken from that dubious source (wikipedia) - "provides improved performance and additional storage but no fault tolerance from disk errors or disk failure"
Trust me, it gives a massive increase in performance. Effectively you're reading/writing from two drives in parallel. RAID 1 allows the read performance increase, but not the write performance hike. I'd almost wager that RAID 0 would give a bigger boost than doubling the RAM.
I recently added an identical drive to my machine and striped the discs - Windows screams along in comparison whether booting or loading applications etc. I've also got a RAID 1 mirrored pair for data and have made the comparisons. As a video editing rig, RAID 0 is a godsend.
RAID 0?
Should that be RAID 1? There's no real advantage to a RAID 0 except capacity. And with a few hundred additional slots available, RAID 1 is the obvious choice. I also see a time in the not too distant future where we will see high end systems with RAID 5.
Blu Ray Monopoly?
I want a new desktop. I went onto Dell's site, you can't configure a PC with a Blu Ray player (I checked with their chat support). Same for HP's site (I'm amazed they're still selling under HP and COMPAQ brands for new PCs). And Fulitsu.
So, if you want a new PC with a built in Blue Ray player, you don't have any choice apart from buying and configuring your own drive unless you want a Sony. Not what I want, I want the vendor to do all the end-end engineering so I can watch Blu Ray movies on the PC without any problem (i..e compatible graphics card with HDMI).
For £2500, I would expect 4GB and a better graphics configuration, with 10,000 RMP hard disk. I guess it'd be too much to expect a 32GB solid state drive for that money.
This fits my HTPC idea too!
I have a unit for my screen which has a fair bit of well ventilated space inside it, where I could hide a larger main box for a system, and for a while now I've been looking for an external enclosure which could take the optical drives and an IR sensor so that the lovely sleek externals aren't spoiled by a massive great PC.
The price is not in line with my purposes, but the form factor certainly is.
