Someone asked for pics of the Viglen Ultra Small Genie

[laserblazer]

The screws finally arrived today, well some of them. Luckily the ones that matter and I was able to put it together. It's a bit of a job, connectors are a bit inaccessible and the monitor stand makes getting a conventional screwdriver to some of the screws difficult. Also, one of the screws needs a special driver (star type with the pinhole)! I finally got it together and it looks pretty good. The monitor stand is robust and steady and it has a simple height adjustment.

 

One thing I like is the cable cover fits over the back and hides all of the I/O away from little fingers. I didn't notice if the psu had a voltage switch but that would be hidden as well. There are 4 USB ports on the back and cables to link two of them to the front of the monitor. There are another two ports on the other side along with audio sockets.

 

It is pretty quiet running and the keyboard has a nice positive feel to it. Probably won't last 5 minutes but that's cheap keyboards for you.

 

All in all, I'm reasonably impressed. We should be seeing a HP DC7800 soon, so I'll see how that stacks up.

 

http://i33.tinypic.com/2yx1an9.jpg

 

Looking towards the cable cover. It has a protective film on it which is why it looks a bit tatty.

 

http://i36.tinypic.com/vwx1c6.jpg

 

The right hand side with additional USB/Audio and the power switch.

 

http://i36.tinypic.com/34ifju9.jpg

[Edu-IT]

Look an awful lot like the ones Dell do.

[srochford]

To be fair, if you're going to mount a cuboid black box on the back of a flat screen then it's going to look pretty much like that :-)

 

At my last place, we had about 1000 of these Viglens (although almost all just standing on the table rather than monitor mounted) and they worked well.

Edited October 3, 2008 by srochford

[mac_shinobi]

PC version of an iMac lol

[Disaster]

so how is the Viglen working for you?

We're looking at buying a load of these or similar style in for the summer...

Also the HP DC7800, does that come with an external power supply?

 

cheers

[K.C.Leblanc]

Also the HP DC7800, does that come with an external power supply?

 

cheers

 

It does,

[srochford]

The ultra small DC7800 (and the DC7900 its successor) both have external power supplies but the "small form factor" have internal PSUs

 

The "small" HP machines are bigger than the Viglen but look fine under a monitor on a desk. A possible benefit of this HP is that the optical drive is standard size which makes it a bit more robust although the ultra small also uses a laptop type drive.

[Steve83]

Heya,

 

I'm currently looking at replacing a large number of old machines for a "all in one" approach!

 

How much (ballpark figure) are the Viglens? and who are the main suppliers, or are viglen dealing direct?

 

Looked at the Dell all in ones, but after a number of problems with the old GX270 generation machines, im trying to stay well clear of them now!

 

Also I know HP does there verison of it. Anyone else using these?

 

All comments would be most appreciated!!

 

Thanks

 

Ste

[sippo]

Everytime I hear the word Viglen it makes me shudder....

[Disaster]

bad experience?

[sippo]

Yep. When I joined the school nearly 3 and a bit years ago, they were using Viglen PC's with classlink. It was the first thing I got rid off. They were paying x amount of money for support which was a waste as they weren't getting any!! Viglen were quite happy to receive the money, but were offering nothing back. Also the PC's (contenders back then) were poorly made.