Toolless desktop, swivelicious monitor

It's been a few weeks since we've been able to test some stuff here at the Cool Tools Test Zone, so as usual we're falling behind. Here's a quick look at two products that have graced our offices and merit the Cool Tools label:

IBM ThinkCentre S50

While many companies have gone the route of giving workers notebooks and having them connect via docking stations when in the office, there are still times when a desktop is needed. Once you get one, the last thing you want is to be hassled when trying to install new hardware, such as a new optical drive, additional memory or a PCI card.

IBM has solved this problem with its ThinkCentre line of desktops. The company sent us an S50 model, which is less than half the size of a normal desktop. It was so small I thought IBM had forgotten to send the complete system.

The best part of the S50 is its toolless design - if you need to open the system to install anything new, you push two buttons on the side and the cover pops open. Other buttons let you pop open the optical drives for easy removal. The overall design is very attractive, with options for the desktop to stand on its side or flat with a monitor placed on top. In addition to the hardware, the S50 includes IBM's Rapid Restore Ultra software (for back-up and restore purposes), and the System Migration Assistant, which transfers data and settings to the desktop.

The ThinkCentre S50 offers speeds up to 3.06 GHz with a Pentium 4 processor (ours was a 2.8-GHz processor), up to 2.06G bytes of RAM and up to an 80G-byte hard drive. The ThinkCentre S series starts at $739. More details.

HP L1925 monitor

Ever since we had to send back the 30-inch wide-screen flat panel monitor from NEC-Mitsubishi, our office has been missing something. HP tried to make me feel a bit better by sending a flat-panel of its own, the L1925. At 19 inches, the monitor is smaller than the wide-screen model, but at least I have some desk space back.

The L1925 has two things that make it cool. First, the back of the monitor has a height-adjustable base, which lets you move the monitor up or down for better viewing. The monitor also can swivel forward or back. The height adjustment was very smooth to operate - it was similar to the way you adjust an office chair.

The second cool thing about the L1925 is the monitor's ability to pivot 90 degrees, to create either a landscape or portrait-sized monitor. The monitor includes PivotPro software from Portrait Displays that lets you rotate the screen in case you want to work on documents in a vertical setting. The monitor supports resolutions up to 1,280 by 1,024 pixels, and up to a 500:1 contrast ratio.

We had one small issue with the monitor - it seemed to flicker after we made height adjustments. It turned out that our monitor connection wasn't tight enough, even though we thought it was.

The L1925 starts at $689. Go to the HP Web site for details.

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