Over our years of pondering the relative merits of laptop and desktop PCs, we’ve had to consciously shift gears. No longer is it acceptable to relentlessly pour our vitriolic hate on non-upgradeable, soon-obsolete laptops, because they’ve now almost caught up with desktop machines. There’s not a literal correlation of power, sure, but if a portable machine can give close to desktop performance, keep us dribbling with good looks, and not cost the earth, we’re quite happy. It’s not as if, at the speed at which the PC is progressing, you’ll feel the same pain that a 486 adopter felt when all laptops started going Pentium. That thin slab of modern electronics will last a few years at least. So instead we need to look at different things. Benchmark results are a good comparative indicator of the strengths of different machines, but they only tell part of the story. The faster PCs get, the more these things only indicate differences which might cause you a femtosecond’s inefficency. Good with very comparable systems, but with something like this? We just need to think logically.

Steel briefcase
The Neo-64 is classed as a media centre, but we’re not sure the media centre currently warrants its own PC-in-a-TV form factor. This configuration, cramming flavour-of-the-minute hardware into an unwieldy surrounding case, has us thinking early generation notebook PCs all over again. Media centres are emerging technologies. Things are going to end up changing somewhere along the line, and when that happens you’re going to look pretty silly. When someone tells us exactly what’s wrong with a box that we can both upgrade and hook up to the TV of our choice, we’ll listen.

Now this is not a laptop, but it uses a laptop chipset, and it’s got a flimsy flip-down representation of a notebook keyboard, complete with built-in trackpad. Everything, from the gigabyte of RAM to the 250GB hard drive to the 3200+ Athlon 64 mobile processor, is built in and locked down. You’re as stuck with the DVD burner as you are with the onboard sound or the screen – and unlike most laptops, there’s no VGA output here – though to its credit the 17in LCD panel is fantastically bright and sharp, better than most laptops we’ve seen. The only real departure from notebook hardware is the lack of a battery – unplug the laptop power supply and the display fizzes to nothingness. All right, so the notebook hardware means the machine will be nice and portable, especially without the added weight of a battery, right? Nah. It’s got a carrying handle, but attempting to drag this from desk to cupboard has us convinced that AJP has filled any empty space in the case with bricks and lead shot. This is the kind of thing that would create a foot-high lump if you dropped it onto the head of a Loony Tunes character.

We shouldn’t be unkind. Of the machines in this test, the Neo-64 probably packs the most powerful processing punch, and it turns up cheaper than most complete machines of comparative speed. This is not to mention the lack of wires and decently sturdy sound output. Problem is, we can’t get over our aversion to the form factor. This can’t be folded up or tucked away, so even if it could output to the TV in your front room – and it can’t – it would look ugly. If you need a media centre PC for your kitchen with a hard-wired keyboard and questionable looks, this is your man. But don’t come running to us when Blu-ray and HD-DVD come out and you find yourself unable to upgrade the internal drive.