The 18.4-inch D1100 from Averatec showed up at my house recently and I thought, hey, lazy Saturday — let’s set it up. I had forgotten the specs, the price, and all the relevant details but when I had gotten everything together (a process which took less than ten minutes) I can tell you that I’m impressed by how nice the computer looks.

Especially since — surprise! — it only costs $599.

The body is a nice, shiny black color, with the 18.4-inch screen resting on a chrome neck that adjusts up and down in order to reach a comfortable viewing angle. The LCD panel can be laid flat and pushed down to rest atop the machine’s body should you need to move the computer to another room.

Unfortunately, the screen doesn’t swivel from side to side — just up and down. And the wired mouse and keyboard kind of detract from the whole all-in-one idea. They just kind of look out of place with their cords running to the back of the machine. Again, though, this thing barely costs as much as a high-end netbook.

Internally, you’ve got a 64-bit AMD dual-core 3250e CPU, 250GB hard drive, 2GB of RAM, DVD burner, Wi-Fi, Ethernet, built-in 1.3-megapixel camera and, of course, the 18.4-inch screen, which features a native resolution of 1680×945 (so no 1080p, sorry) and is powered by an ATI Radeon HD 3200-series GPU.

The machine comes preloaded with Windows Vista Home Premium, which returns an Experience Index score of 3.0 — the lowest subscore being in the graphics department. Everything seems relatively snappy so far, but I haven’t really loaded anything onto the computer yet, aside from replacing IE with Google Chrome and uninstalling Norton Antivirus because it asked too many questions and wouldn’t let me close out of it without resorting to the Task Manager.

And, of course, the question on everyone’s mind: How does Tiger Woods PGA Tour 06 (that’s right, 06) play on it? It plays wonderfully. The graphics only top out at 1024×768, but everything looks nice and fluid. The sound from the tiny speakers is pretty tinny, though. Tin-like, that is.

Full review coming up once I put this thing through the paces. Here are some photos:

Averatec D1100 Series [ShopAveratec.com]