All in One PCs - Good or bad idea?

Hoseman

My dad wants an all in one pc and has seen an Asus he's interested in. I get the feeling that a lot of people aren't keen on the pc versions but I might be wrong.

Budget is around £600. Are they worth it or bad idea?

aerostar

Personally I think they are a bad idea, reason - If they go wrong out of warranty then repairs are expensive as they use own makers parts - with desktop PC you can replace many parts quite easily with off the shelf ones.

esuhl

They have the downsides of a laptop (premium price, difficult & expensive to repair, with VERY limited upgrade options) combined with the downsides of a desktop (not portable).

The only benefits are the aesthetic appearance and the fact that they may be more compact than a desktop PC. But you pay a big price for that.

If space is an issue, you can often "hide" the PC out of the way somewhere, and the monitor, keyboard and mouse won't take up any more "useful space" than an all-in-one would.

kstanley7

esuhl is correct in saying they can be very difficult and expensive to repair, I myself had an acer 5600u all in one, and being very technologically minded when it comes to repairing them, it was a pain in the backside for me to repair. I personally would recommend a small form factor pc that way it can be cheaper to repair/upgrade and can be hidden from sight.

Cycrow

There are ways to limit the downsides in all in ones if you build one yourself.

you can get small itx cases that you can attach to the back of a monitor, or monitors with them already built in. Then you put in what parts you like, as most of the parts will be standard, upgrading and repairing them can be easier.

the main downside is in the price, as this tends to be more expensive, also due to the small size of the cases, they can often be quite fiddly to put together.
There may be abit chunkier, or not as sleak as a proper all in one however

also if you ever wanted to upgrade it to a desktop, then all you would need is a new case, and everything else would be able to transfer

Cisco001

What spec is that All in One.

I would suggest you get a standard monitor with speakers (£150) nettop PC which can hook to the back of monitor, and wireless keyboard + mouse (£25).

PC Barebone
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Zotac-CI520-NETTOP-Intel-GRAPH/dp/B00KQCORY2/ref=sr_1_22?ie=UTF8&qid=1411633416&sr=8-22&keywords=nettop+pc

SSHD
http://www.cclonline.com/product/112710/ST1000LM014/Hard-Drives/Seagate-Momentus-XT-2-5-1TB-Solid-State-Hybrid-Drive-/HDD1936/?siteID=8BacdVP0GFs-Q7QArmIKboLCfKYoe9UvQA

RAM
http://www.cclonline.com/product/88138/KVR16S11/8/Laptop-Memory/Kingston-Value-RAM-8GB-1600MHz-DDR3-Non-ECC-SODIMM-Memory-Module/RAM0648/

OS - either install ubuntu for free or Windows 8.1 £82 for retail version, £73 for OEM.