Ripple Look Nettop

A company called Ripple have launched a new nettop on the scene called the ‘Look’.   Specs are pretty much par for the course, you get a dual core Atom 330, 2GB RAM, 320GB storage and Intel GMA950 graphics.  Like some other nettops, the Ripple Look can be mounted to the back of your monitor via the standard VESA mounts.  It’s currently being sold in  Korea, where you can have it for $321. A couple more shots after the break.

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The ViewSonic VOT120/121 is a pair of tiny nettops that can be mounted to the back of your computer monitor, or television monitor. Both the VOT120 and VOT121 offer Draft-N WiFi, and a DVI output port to connect to your monitor. Somewhat oddly, they also include an eSata port to connect external storage, which we suppose might be difficult if it’s mounted to your monitor!

The VOT120 is based on Intel’s Atom processor, while the VOT121 packs more of a punch with Intel’s CULV platform.

Viewsonic's VOT132 nettop with HDMI and DVI

Lars, over at Netbooknews, has posted a hands-on video with the new Viewsonic nettops – the VOT130 and VOT132.  We are impressed, these nettops look realy good.  The VOT130 uses a standard netbook-like configuration, but the VOT132 gets the dual core Intel Atom 330 chip as well as Nvidia Ion with DVI and HDMI out.   On top of all of that, the case in which the VOT nettops are packaged is tiny, stylish, and easy to upgrade.

These nettops look like they are going to be a huge hit when they come to the UK.  Oh, we almost forgot, there’s also a sleek DVD module that can be magnetically attached to these nettops.   No word yet on UK pricing or availability, but we will report it as soon as we know.

Check out the video after the break. Read the rest of this entry »

Viewsonic VOT 130 Ion powered nettop

Above, and pictured, we have the Viewsonic VOT 130 which is a pretty typical nettop with an Atom N270 CPU, GMA950 graphics, up to 2GB of RAM, and a 160GB hard drive.

But there’s also a souped up model called the VOT 132 that not only packs a dual core Atom 330 CPU but also the Nvidia Ion chipset, which includes NVIDIA GeForce 9400M graphics. The VOT132 will also support up to 3GB of RAM and come with a 250GB hard drive, as well as HDMI output.  Of course, both model covered the basics as well with 6 USB ports, DVI, Ethernet, and 802.11b/g/n WiFi.

Prices have not yet been announced for the UK market, but in the US the VOT 130 will sell for about $331 USD while the NVIDIA ION-powered VOT 132 will be about $514 USD.

Acer Aspire Revo Nettop

The Acer Revo is one of the most highly anticipated Nettops, and we have a comprehensive review here.  The tested included an Atom 230 processor, 2GB of RAM, and a 250GB 2.5-inch HDD.

Setup
The out of box experience was excellent and the packaging was excellent.  The device has a small power brick, a helpful (if not incredibly firm) stand, and little else to worry about.

Performance
There are two main chips here: the CPU and the GPU.   Unfortunately, while we were very impressed with NVIDIA Ion’s performance (it’s basically the GeForce 9400m for cheap and low-power computers), the slow Atom 230 processor almost ruins it . The fact that Ion can run Vista is also a bit of a double-edged sword: accelerated interface elements like Aero Glass and Flip3D are great, and the windowing system is much snappier than traditional netbooks, but they come at the cost of an overall performance hit over running XP — hopefully Windows 7 will arrive soon.

Video Playback

Video playback is the real winner here, with accelerated 1080p video. Unfortunately, you have to know what you’re doing. For instance, a 1080p QuickTime movie plays nice and accelerated in PowerDVD, but horribly in actual QuickTime, since it’s not a GPU-accelerated application. Blu-ray movies also work great, but you have to wait through a sluggishness of the PowerDVD program.

Wrap-up
The Revo is a really odd mix, a device that can excel at “enthusiast” applications like video transcoding and gaming, but struggles with a basic web app or YouTube.  High-end users will know exactly how to put the Revo to good use, but for a couple more hundies they could get a lot more CPU power in perhaps a Dell Studio Hybrid or Mac mini. We’re sure the market will solve all this — there’s no denying that it’s a lot of bang for the buck — but we’d say nettop manufacturers should try pairing Ion with higher performance chips as soon as possible, and hopefully they can hit a bit broader of a target.