Lenovo C300 All-in-One PC

The C300 also has no touchscreen, which is tough given that several competing (and less expensive) all-in-ones do. And finally, the C300's networking is pretty weak: It has only 802.11g Wi-Fi (no N), and 10/100 ethernet instead of gigabit speeds. This won't affect your usual Web browsing experience, but it will certainly bog down your network file transfers.

The unit's 20-inch (1600-by-900 resolution) screen provides a good mix of strong contrasts and colorful saturation. The only real flaw is in extremely dark scenes, where a faint bit of backlight glow can be detected at the top and bottom of the display. The C300's integrated sound, however, is another story. The included speakers aren't very pleasant to listen to at all--they're worse than what you'd typically find on a run-of-the-mill laptop, which in itself is a rather low bar.

Six USB ports line the sides and rear of the C300, along with a multiformat card reader and a mini-FireWire 400 port. It's nice to see Lenovo at least attempting to offer a connection above and beyond the standard USB. You also get an integrated DVD writer (you can watch DVD movies with it, too). That's a good thing, as you can't actually go into the C300's guts to replace or modify either component. What you buy is what you get.

The compelling features of Lenovo's C300--good performance, good price, great capacity--show that the company did well in considering the big-picture elements that go into a successful all-in-one system. However, drawbacks like poor networking features, the lack of a touchscreen, and that 32-bit OS issue all limit the unit's appeal.

--David Murphy