It's unsurprising that a lot of effort went into this, as it was an easy, if not optimistic, way for making up for the actual machine's lack of graphical prowess.

ENGADGET: blogger-avatar

Let's focus on the actual machine first: here we have a Core i5-2410M (2.3GHz to 2.9GHz) rig packing a 14-inch 1, 366 x 768 LCD, Intel HD Graphics 3000, 4GB of DDR3 RAM, 500GB 7200rpm hard drive, and a DVD burner that can be swapped with a secondary battery.

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The ability to go back and forth between that information and the actual machine would be useful and might give shoppers less excuse to check out models on their smart phones or iPads while in the store (in the process perhaps spotting a lower price and leaving to buy online).

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The actual operation of the machine, handled by a simple four-button LCD display, was both logical and intuitive.

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In my tests on both machines, the actual installation took about two hours, but a full workday or more was spent tweaking each machine, and getting updates to Windows 8 and its built-in apps.

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