With the rise of inevitable human machine interaction, arises the need to manufacture products that are easier to use for even the novice users, and this remains to be the major focus for the companies in the last two decades. One sector that has particularly the most affected of this necessity has been the computing industry. The increase in simplicity of usage has made billions jump into the world of PCs, bidding goodbye to the complicated commands and jargon difficult to understand. Moreover, the latest revolution that is in place by Apple with the presentation of the new iPad, preceded by the fantabulous iPhone and iPod has given way for a new revolution based exclusively on the use of touch screen.

There are numerous companies in the recent years that have diligently devoted to the manufacturing of hardware for PC, hence offering much more advanced components and interfacing with most varied need of the users. MSI, which stands for Micro Star International is definitely one of those Taiwanese companies that has emerged in the recent years. It has managed to put up products on the shelves that are of impeccable quality and ones that are suitable for over-clocking making them just perfect for varied needs. Being a true giant in the industry, MSI is doing a makeover of its policy of distributing commercial activities, that this brand has greater visibility. In order to support this new strategy, it has got into the widespread distribution of a new product launch, an All-in-One Wind Top AE2400 which is a multi touch PC. But, is this enough to compete with the similar, but much cheaper, Advent MT22? Read on to find out.

MSI Wind Top AE2400 Desktop PC

Design:

Not a style icon:

When it comes to design and style, this MSI Wind Top AE2400 Desktop PC is pretty basic, without too many flashy bits and bobs. Essentially, it is just a huge black box, parts of the AE2400′s body have a brushed aluminium effect, while the rest of it is condemned to the world of glossy black plastic. It is certainly worth mentioning, though, that the glossy panel quickly collects fingerprints. It looks alright, but just a little cheap. MSI has worked hard on the AE2400′s enclosure, too. While the machine does not particularly stand out, especially when compared to the metallic-effect Acer, the glossy black exterior and brushed aluminium highlighting lends the machine an air of understated elegance. Reinforcing this suave appearance is a row of touch-sensitive buttons that glow with a white light when activated before slowly fading. These turn it on and off, handle volume, and let you control the monitor’s OSD and a screen dimming eco-friendly mode.

Display:

However, the display inAE2400 is pretty sweet at 23.6 inches deep and with a 1080p panel that supports the multi-touch feature. When it comes to quality, it cannot scale the heights of the dual-backlit Sony, but it is certainly the equal of the similarly-priced Acer Aspire Z5610: vibrant colours, sharp detail and a native resolution of 1920 x 1080 pixels make movies and pictures look good as well as providing plenty of desktop real estate.

Remote:

The remote control is very ugly; it works well as described above, but it has the square look and feel of a TV from the 1990s.

Connectivity:

Connectivity is pretty comprehensive with a range of range of conventional ports and sockets including six USB ports, a multi-format card reader, a DVD drive, Ethernet, eSATA, SPDIF, VGA, HDMI in, which allows you to watch Blu-rays and play your games consoles through the display, and even a port to plug in an aerial for the built-in TV tuner. And, you have also got a 1.3 megapixel webcam and built-in mic. Elsewhere there is a Blu-ray drive and a hybrid DVB-T TV tuner, which allows you to watch analogue and record digital TV or vice versa, a capacious 1TB hard drive, and a DVD-writer.

User Interface of AE2400:

Previous generations of Wind Top machines have relied on an awkward, twitchy carousel of icons for launching applications, but MSI’s new Wind Touch front-end is far easier to use. The touch interface is smooth and accurate, if you are not new with Windows 7 Touch, it is pretty simple: tap once to click and hold your finger to the screen for a moment to right-click. A quick doodling session in Paint was enough to convince us of the touch panel’s sensitivity, and the multi-touch worked well. It has been modelled on the front ends used on the majority of large modern touch-screen systems, with large icons in the middle of the screen, with a dock above containing many more. Note that this system ships with Windows 7 Home Premium. It is worth mentioning that multi-touch on this machine responds to a maximum of two fingers. We just cannot imagine asking for more, two is all you need for scrolling up and down on Web pages, after all.

Features:

The last MSI touchscreen PC, the Wind Top AE2020, proved underwhelming thanks to its small stature, underpowered specification and weak software. The firm has obviously learned from its mistakes, though, and its new AE2400 makes a much better first impression.

Multi-media:

As we can imagine, this as one of the machine’s main selling points. There is an aerial included, although we suspect you might want to use a more heavy-duty aerial to guarantee clear signal. Once you get connected, you can watch Freeview TV using the Windows Media Center interface. We are quite familiar with this interface and generally find it simple and intuitive. Television shows can be recorded to the PC for playback later. Considering this PC ships with a whopping 1TB of storage, we cannot imagine you running out of disk space in a hurry.

Processor and Graphics:

But enough of this shallow poking around, we think it is time to go beyond the machine’s exterior, dig our fists into the AE2400′s innards and bring its insides out into the cold light of day. Intel’s Core 2 Duo E5400 is a dual-core part that runs at 2.7GHz and, backed up by 4GB of DDR3 RAM, scored a reasonable 1.29 in our benchmarks, enough to power through most computing tasks, although it cannot compete with the 1.44 and 1.47 scored by the Acer and Sony machines. That should shelter the AE2400 from slowdown. We certainly found the whole system to be nippy, and 1080p video content played back very smoothly. Unlike other machines, there is not even a hint of sluggishness; navigating MSI’s software, as well as the applications on offer in Windows 7 Home Premium, is about as fluid as anything we have seen, even matching the A-Listed Sony VAIO VPC-L11S1E, which costs over £400 more than the MSI.

This MSI Wind Top AE2400 Multi-Touch Computer system also has gaming potential, thanks to an ATI Radeon HD5730 graphics card nestled deep within. That GPU helped the AE2400 achieve a high score in our tests. This PC will not exactly blow dedicated gaming computers out of the water, but with scores like these, a spot of gaming should not be out of the question.

Software:

MSI has spent less time engineering its own applications, though. The “work” half of the dock is filled with links to Microsoft Office’s individual components alongside a host of Windows utilities, and the “play” portion of the software contains links to basic painting, note-taking and photo-management tools alongside the Windows 7 Touch Pack applications. Nevertheless, the software offering is no worse than on systems from HP, Acer and Packard Bell, all of which prop up Microsoft’s applications with their own basic tools and low-rent games. Still ahead of the pack in this regard is Sony, which has its own range of media management tools based on the XrossMediaBar first introduced in the PlayStation 3.

MSI AE2400 Multi-Touch All in one PC

Performance:

Speed:

We were really pleased with these performance scores. Well, for starters, the machine has a pretty swift boot up time which is handy if you are planning on using the AE2400 as a family centred PC – maybe even replacing your dining room TV setup. From the time you click the power button everything is loaded and ready to go in just over a minute and a half. Basic tasks like word processing and surfing the web are almost instantaneous and more strenuous activity like photo editing is dealt with efficiently and without much trouble at all. Game play is fluid and the graphics looks great and there is no lag and no instances of slow-down.

Video Playback:

With streaming HD content there is a tiny amount of stutter with World Cup footage on the iPlayer and CPU usage seemed a little high at around 70-80 per cent, but another episode looks very sharp and played back nicely. Downloaded HD content from the iPlayer played back using Adobe Air is also stutter free. YouTube 1080p content was seamless and CPU usage was down to around 30 per cent indicating that YouTube is more efficient at offsetting HD video processing to the GPU which probably says more about the BBC’s encoding than the AE2400′s ability to stream HD. Blu-ray playback looked absolutely stunning, as Blu-rays should do and the remote control was very responsive when using the built-in Blu-ray player software. The remote also worked completely with Windows Media Player and Centre, and basic commands also worked with VLC and Media Player Classic.

Performance is the first thing other than the 1TB hard drive that the MSI AE2400 Desktop Computer offers over the MT22, which was a little lack-lustre when it came to chucking polygons around.

Sound:

The speakers are worth mentioning, too. They seem to be the loudest we have ever heard on an all-in-one PC and, at full volume, proved to be deafening. They would capably fill a room with sound even at half strength. The excessive volume is backed up with good quality; the 10W sub woofer provides adequate bass, and the pair of 5W speakers sat on the front of the machine fill out the rest of the range well, even if treble is a little muddy. Still, we would have no qualms about watching movies and TV on the MSI.

Noise:

Obviously noise is a factor when using any PC as a media player but the AE2400 uses a low-power TDP 65W CPU, so fan noise is kept to a minimum. The optical drive did not make any more noise than a traditional Blu-ray player would either. Although it has to be said that the machine does make a heck of a din when you first turn it on and it boots into life, but this only lasts about a second so it is not the end of the world.

Package:

The MSI Wind Top AE2400 All-in-one PC comes in a very colourful box with an enhanced picture of the product. It has presented itself as not just a PC but a scope of entertainment that knows how to juggle, thanks to the versatility in its features and hardware. It has been well packed to withstand and possible damage while shipping. The overall package looks quite complete, with a compact wireless keyboard and mouse, a user manual, four batteries, a power cable, a plastic stylus for the multi touch feature, a remote and a CD with drivers.

Warranty:

MSI offers Wind Top AE2400 one year warranty for parts and labour.

Verdict:

MSI’s previous machines have not impressed us, but this new MSI marks an impressive return to form. We can definitely see the appeal of an all-in-one touch-screen, particularly if you are a student who wants TV, gaming and computing in one place. We have no complaints about this machine per se, but we would advise that if higher-grade performance is not a top priority for you, you might be better off with the Advent MT22, which offers an almost identical range of features without as much processing punch. The combination of quality screen, speakers, Blu-ray drive and TV tuner mark the AE2400 out as an affordable media machine, and the smooth software makes the latest Wind Top better than many of its mid-range rivals and the deserved recipient of a ‘Recommended’ award too.

MSI Wind Top AE2400 Desktop PC – Technical Specification Table

Manufacturer MSI
Model Name MSI ‘Wind Top’ AE2400
Series Entertainment Series
Desktop type All in one
Dimensions (W x H x D) 577.28 x 445.61 x 72.95 mm
Colour Black
Display type Touch Screen
Display size 23.6-inch
Display features multi-touch
WXGA (1920 x 1080) pixels
Operating system Genuine Windows® 7 Home Premium
Spindle Speed 7,200 RPM
Cache 16MB
Processor Intel® Pentium Dual Core™ E5400
Intel® Core 2 Quad™ Q9400s
Chipset Intel® G41 + ICH7
Graphics processor Discrete ATI Radeon HD5730 with 1GB (or 512MB) DDR3 VRAM
Or HD565v with 1GB (or 512MB) DDR3 VRAM
Memory DDR3 4GB Max: 8GB
HD Capacity 1TB
Hard Disk Drive 3.5” SATA2 Hard Disk Drive
Memory card device 6-in-1 (Support SD,MMC,MS,XD)
Network interface 802.11b/g/n (Wireless)
10/100/1000 Gigabit LAN
Video capture interface 1.3MP Webcam with Microphone
Wireless technologies 802.11 b/g/n Wireless LAN
VGA Controller Intel® GMA950
Video RAM Share Memory up to 228MB
TV tuner Optional (PCI-E interface)
Expansion Slot Mini PCI-E x 2
Audio 2 x 5W 5.1 channel speakers + 10W  Subwoofer
Peripherals Wireless USB mouse and keyboard
Media Center remote control, TV aerial
Optical Drive Tray-in DVD Super Multi
External I/O ports 1 x HDMI in
1 x VGA out
1 x eSATA
6-in-1 Card Reader (support SD/MMC/MS/XD)
6 x USB 2.0
1 x DC-in jack
2 x USB 2.0
1 x LAN jack (RJ45)
1 x Microphone-in
1 x Headphone-out
Power 180W
Warranty 1 year, pick-up and return, parts and labour

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