The ‘nettop’ – a mash-up of a netbook and a desktop – has successfully carved a niche for itself as a desktop replacement. And why not? It offers two things most Indians would love: it takes lesser room (it can actually be hung on the back of your monitor!), and has lesser power requirements.
However, there was always the missing feature of not being able to play high-definition video on the nettops, such as the Asus EEE Box. What’s the point of having a 20-inch screen if you can’t take advantage of it, right?
Well, all that has changed with the new Acer Aspire Revo, which can play back full HD 1080p video, thanks to the Nvidia ION chip it is based on.
“The Nvidia ION platform is, without a doubt, a disruptive technology that allows small PCs to deliver high performance and the Aspire Revo is testament to the fact,” said Sridhar Manthani, Senior Director, R&D at Nvidia Bangalore. “The Aspire Revo clearly demonstrates the power of Nvidia Ion to deliver a full and unique multimedia experience for an amazingly low price. In the near future, we believe that Nvidia Ion along with like-minded partners such as Acer will make affordable high performance computing a reality for all consumer.”
Running on Windows Vista, the Aspire Revo is powered by a 1.6GHz Intel Atom 230 processor, 2GB of RAM (expandable up to 4GB), a 160GB hard disk (upgradable up to 1TB) and an onboard Nvidia GeForce 9400 GPU.
Apart from an eSATA port to connect another hard disk, for multimedia purposes, the Aspire Revo also offers connectivity for HDMI, VGA and 7.1 channel audio.
Internet users can avail of the built-in Wi-Fi chip to access the Web, or connect via the standard Ethernet port. And of course, there’s a ton of USB ports to connect to.
For a price of Rs 22,999, that really isn’t a bad deal. In fact, the Acer Aspire Revo would be ideal for someone who is short of space, likes his multimedia but isn’t terribly into gaming.