So today we’re seeing monster update from Apple, including a new iMac with bumped specifications, a new Mac Pro with an option for up to 12 cores, a new Cinema Display and a fresh from the labs Magic Trackpad that debuts for the first time. This now means that the entire Apple line-up has been refreshed for 2010, except the Macbook Air which we eagerly await a much needed refresh.

We’ll start with the new iMac. Apple has updated the minimum specifications for the 21.5″ iMac to an Intel Core i3 processor at 3.06 GHz, 4GB of RAM, 500GB hard drive and ATI Radeon HD 4670 graphics (a bit outdated really) all for US$1,199. If you fancy the screen real estate or power of the 27″ model you’ll be seeing quad-core Intel Core i5s, a 1TB hard drive and ATI Radeon HD 5750 graphics with 1GB of dedicated GDDR5 as the base model for US$1,999, scaling up to a 2.93 GHz Core i7 and the brand new option of an SSD.

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Today we have with us in our labs the eGreat EG-M32B “Networked Media Tank” courtesy of House of DAP and Digital8. eGreat is a company well known on the Chinese gadgets market for HD Media Players, and the sample we have received today is a fine example. The EG-M32B is capable of Full HD 1080p output via HDMI, Dolby Digital support and room for a 3.5″ hard drive on the inside supporting up to 2 TB of video, music and photos.

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Yesterday Apple announced an update to the Mac Mini, one of the most underused products from Apple’s Mac line-up. The new Mini is much slimmer and smaller than previous models, coming in at just a 19.5cm (7.7″) square and just 3.5cm (1.4″) thick. The whole unit comes in a nice aluminium unibody enclosure to fit with all other Macs of late, and the slot loading DVD drive (not Blu-ray, disappointingly) and Apple logo take up much of the visible space.

Internally the Mac Mini is nothing special. It comes with an Intel Core 2 Duo processor clocking in at 2.4 GHz, 2 GB of DDR3 memory expandable to 8 GB, a 320 GB 5400 RPM hard drive and Nvidia GeForce 320M integrated graphics. 802.11n wireless is available along with Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR. Apple claims that the whole system volume has been shrunk by 20% to allow for the GPU, along with an SD card slot and HDMI port on the back. Four USB ports are present on the back panel along with FireWire 800 and a mini DisplayPort.

The whole system will set you back US$699, and you will also have the satisfaction of knowing that you just bought “the world’s most energy efficient desktop.” Gallery of the new Mac Mini is below.

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After a long, hard battle getting the device actually onto the market, Asus today is officially launching the EeeKeyboard. The EeeKeyboard was shown off way back at CES 2009 (almost 16 months ago) before getting launch dates every few months for a year followed delays and then more launches, the absolute final one being May 2010 – we hope it’s for real this time.

For those of you who aren’t up to speed, the Asus EeeKeyboard is a whole computer in a keyboard. It packs a now-outdated Intel Atom N270 processor, 1GB of DDR2 memory, a 16/32GB solid state drive, Bluetooth, WiFi b/g/n, internal speakers and mic, HDMI out and an internal battery good for 4 hours of use. There is also a 5″ 800×600 capacitive touchscreen display present on the board for easy launching of apps; the whole system is powered by Windows XP.

The Asus EeeKeyboard is currently up for pre-order on Amazon for US$599, but a final shipping date is still a mystery.

The Shuttle Barebone XS35 is a new slimline nettop/HTPC from Shuttle that’s just 3.3cm thick – perfect for chucking behind your TV as a media PC. It will come loaded with a 1.66GHz Intel Atom D510 dual-core processor, Intel MN10 Express chipset and a Nvidia GT218 (aka ION2) graphics card perfect for 1080p video playback through HDMI. It also comes with a 2.5″ hard drive and slimline optical drive.

The whole system can be VESA mounted behind a flat-panel display and is passively cooled for a practically silent setup. The XS35 will ship sometime in the second half of the year, and a price has yet to be unveiled. More of this machine will be seen at CeBIT in March.

Like Linux and also want a small desktop PC? Try out the Open-PC Atom powered nettop designed specifically for those of you who use and love Linux. It comes with hardware that requires only completely free drivers and no proprietary software at all – an Atom N330 dual-core CPU at 1.6GHz, an ASrock motherboard, 3GB of RAM, Intel GMA950 graphics, a 160GB hard drive all in a mini-ITX case with 250W PSU. It also comes preloaded with a KDE-based Linux distro configured for the computer’s hardware.

The Open-PC will be available at the end of February for €359.

The latest rumour out of the Apple camp is that of a new 22-inch touchscreen iMac to join the ranks of the other current-gen 21.5″ and 27″ non-touch systems. The new Mac is rumoured to be shipping sometime in 2010, with Quanta producing the model and Sintek Photronic supplying the panels. Like most Apple rumours these days, any actual info from Apple could be months (even years) away.

It isn’t surprising to see rumours for a touchscreen desktop iMac with loads of rumours surrounding the unconfirmed Apple Tablet with a modified Mac touchscreen interface. They could (and probably will) port some aspects of the Tablet interface to the new iMac. It will also be interesting to see the design of the new iMac; whether they choose to keep the same design as the 21.5″ one or go for a whole new design.

If you’re currently browsing for a cheap, compact secondary web-browsing PC then maybe the NorhTec Gecko Surfboard is right for you. The “surfboard” pretty much explains what the keyboard PC should be used for – surfing the net – as it only packs a 1GHz processor coupled with 512MB of RAM and should boot from either an SD card or 2.5″ drive.

Luckily though the PC is rated at using only 5W of power thanks to a fanless design and contains both a VGA port and composite cables for TV hook-up. Oh, and WiFi b/g too. Overall the keyboard PC (which is similar to the Eee Keyboard minus the screen) should set you back just US$99 if you can put up with Linux; if you can’t you can add Windows XP for an extra US$50. You’ll be seeing more of this keyboard PC at CES 2010 in January.

Here is some serious graphics computing power: the University of Antwerp (in Belgium, if you didn’t know) has made a new supercomputer, named the FASTRA II, that packs an incredible 13 GPUs for a total of twelve teraFLOPS. They achieved this feat thanks to six dual-GPU Nvidia GTX 295s and one single-GPU Nvidia GTX 275, flexible PCIe cables and some custom BIOS made for them thanks to Asus.

To fit all these graphics cards (and the 4 power supplies required to run them) they had to have a case specially made for them with a graphics card cage. Of course, with so many graphics cards you would have to expect issues, and according to the FASTRA II team they are having difficulties with the drivers and software stability. However, once all the kinks have been ironed out, this system for €6,000 is quite cheap considering the power.

It appears as though HP has leaked a huge heap of info about some upcoming products they are releasing, including info about new Intel processors and ATI graphics cards, along with the new HP software suite. All of the leaked info looks current and details the new North American Spring 2010 line-up from HP, which by the looks of it is going to be a good line-up.

In the new HP Pavillion desktop computers it appears as though we will be seeing the latest from Intel’s Clarkdale range. The new Core i5-6xx processors will be included, featuring Intel’s Turbo Boost technology that can speed up certain cores depending on the workload at hand. Core i3-5xx processors are also going to be used, however these will feature a lowered L3 cache and no Turbo Boost technology. It is also speculated that the HP TouchSmart will be getting an upgrade to the Arrandale Core i5 and i7s.

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