Dell's Multimedia Mini PC Ships With Ubuntu

It measures 8 inches by 8 inches--a mini system--but it packs some powerful features and is available with Ubuntu Linux pre-loaded. Dell's Zino HD Desktop computers sell for $230. For that you 8GB of RAM, you can choose from one of ten colors, you get discrete graphics, and you get some notable HD and entertainment-oriented options. It's good to see the world's number two PC supplier shipping Ubuntu on a desktop computer in addition to shipping it on netbooks and laptops.

The Zino HD desktops offer HDMI output and you can choose an optional Blu-Ray Disc drive. The standard 1TB of hard drive space is also proof positive that you can start to expect a terabyte in reasonably low-cost computers now. The system comes with one of four AMD Athlon processors, with the Athlong 2650e 1.6-GHz chip standard. ATI's Radeon HD3200 graphics card is also standard.

If you haven't used Ubuntu lately, it's much more graphical and multimedia-friendly than it used to be, and could be a good OS choice for the Zino HD. You can also get Ubunu on Dell's Mini 10v netbooks, as we discussed here.