Can all-in-one desktops be good developer machines?

"Three things you need to check:

Make sure there's a good user-replacable hard drive
Check the maximum supported ram vs what's actually installed
Make sure it's a 64-bit OS

Regarding the 2nd item: If you do any virtual machine work, 4GB is the bare minimum and will feel constraining. Since you do both open source and MS-based development, odds are at a bare minimum you'll want to use VM's to manage separate environements for each platform at some point. That means you will want to add ram to that configuration.

On the other hand, if you're sure you won't be using virtual machines, that's more than adequate to run visual studio, and I'd just worry about the hard drive."

"Nothing in the current machines would stop you from development, but I would make sure that there is the ability to get into the box to do things like upgrade memory, or replace hard drives. With todays systems, almost everything you would need to add can be added via USB so as long as it has at least 4 high speed USB ports, you should be set...and if not you can always add a hub later.

Touch on the desktop is starting to get warm, so you might want to consider a machine that has that capability. Some of the newer development tools (like Embarcadero's RAD Studio 2010) are including full support for these new hardware input devices."