"we don't know how to make a $500 computer that's not a piece of junk."
So, instead they decided to make a (over) $1,000 computer that's even worse!
Seriously. Dual core...1.4ghz...Intel graphics? My phone from more than 2 years ago has those specs. It also cost less. That's not a joke. Galaxy s3 is 1.4ghz, dual core and has a GPU as powerful as one of those Intel POSes. It was somewhere around $700 at the time. ( Note: Exact specs depend on the exact one you got. They had a number of variations, such a slower quad core. )
Could they have possibly made a new computer with any worse specs? The Intel 5000 series is slower than a a Geforce 425m. That's not a desktop card mind you, that m stands for mobile! I also just checked on the CPU, and sure enough, that's indeed a mobile CPU too. It's obviously not too surprising they don't have a high end CPU due to the size limitations and all...but an actual mobile CPU? Ouch.
I'm pretty sure for $1,099 I can find a laptop that is faster than this, and we all know how over-priced laptops are. Oh hey, look at that., the first one I looked at: http://www.dell.com/us/p/alienware-14/pd.aspx ( The base model. ) So, not only is it over-priced for being a laptop, has a CPU that is nearly twice as fast and a GPU that is more than twice as fast, it's also an over-priced Alienware.
All for the same price.
Granted, the screen is absolute crap by comparison ( Alienware is after all, overpriced crap as well. ), but imagine if I tried to compare it to any kind of actual computer. We're talking a $500 desktop and a $100 monitor would run rings around this absolute piece of trash, for nearly half the price!