The Clymo Brief: The charitable PC
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That’ll teach me to go on holiday. No sooner do I get home than I find my bank account has had two cash withdrawals made that never actually happened. So I’m back at the local branch to see if the forms I filled in a week earlier have even been sent off because I’ve not heard a whisper.

Unfortunately I get the middle-aged trainee who chooses to ignore everything I say and just starts tapping away on her keyboard. “We’ve been told not to get in touch with that department for at least 16 days,” she says. “They don’t like it.”

Well that told me.

On the way out, I bump into a man wearing a silly hat who starts pestering me about signing up to a charitable organisation, even though I’m feeling rather less than generous at the time. After all, nearly £300 has mysteriously disappeared from my current account and vanished into the ether.

Dell's scarlet temptress
Yes folks, it’s never been easier to give. You’ll even have the chance to dig deep if you buy the new Dell XPS One RED. This is a PC that packs everything into one, so the screen and inner workings are all inside a single deliciously designed box. A bit like the current iMac, but it’s a Dell.

To be honest, it’s not often I see a Dell computer and feel like it’s making a style statement, but that’s exactly what the XPS One RED manages to achieve. It’s properly expensive too, so it has the looks and price tag to match the iMac.

This particular Dell is so named because it sports the branding of RED, the organisation fighting against AIDS and brainchild of U2’s Bono. According to their manifesto, RED is not a charity, but rather a business model which wants us to buy products or services from participating companies. They then distribute a portion of any profits to help fight AIDS using anti-retroviral drugs. Plenty of big businesses have already come on board, such as Microsoft, American Express and Apple, who produced their iPod nano and shuffle in a feisty crimson tint not long ago.
Cash for charity
Now I like the concept and also the delivery of this idea - that’s all well and good. But I was a bit taken aback to see the variation in price between the standard XPS One and its redder counterpart. Dell is asking an extra £300 for this scarlet beauty, giving it a £1299 price tag compared to the £999 black version.

Oddly enough, that £300 doesn’t equate to a larger lump of cash going to the good cause either. From reading the blurb on Dell’s website, it seems that despite paying this much more than the regular black XPS One, only $80 (£40) goes to the good cause. However, the Dell site does add that this means over six months of anti-retroviral treatment for one person. So that’s alright then.

Money issues aside, there are some nice touches here over the cheaper version, like a faster processor, the chunky 500GB hard disk and a Radeon HD2400 graphics card. Even so, it still seems like a lot of extra cash to shell out if you ask me. The operating system is Vista Ultimate instead of Home Premium but both machines share some similar features, like a natty 2 megapixel webcam that comes built into the screen.

Easy on the eye
There’s no doubt that the XPS One RED is easy on the eye though. The 20 inch screen looks fabulous and Dell has done come cool things with the controls that offer up a tantalising glow every time your hand goes near them. There are plenty of slots for all kinds of media cards and a standard DVD writer, but only a single TV tuner and no Blu-ray drive. That could push some consumers to look elsewhere when spending a serious wedge of money like this.
Other highlights? I love the overall lack of visible cables. Hooking up a computer always ends up with an annoying spaghetti-like array of cables running everywhere, but the Dell successfully manages to do away with all that nonsense. The slick-looking aluminium neck, which holds the unit just above your desktop looks smart as well and the glass finish to the monitor shell oozes class.

So, there’s undoubtedly an awful lot going for this particular Dell. Ultimately though, you may be better off buying the cheaper model and giving your spare change directly to the man in the silly hat instead.

In the meantime, all I ask is for the bank to find my missing £300. That way, I’ll have the difference needed to treat myself to an XPS One RED plus I’ll be doing my bit for charity. Then we’ll all be happy, right?

Recent columns from Rob Clymo:
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Rob Clymo is a journalist employed on a freelance basis by Microsoft. The views in this article are those of the author and not of MSN or Microsoft.