News - Acer Aspire Revo (NVIDIA ION) system pricing revealed

[HEXUS]

Available in at least four models, we look at the pricing proposition.

Read more.

[d3fiant]

mmmm, £179 plus linux and xbmc and plugged into my Sony TV, its a done deal

[MadduckUK]

8GB SSD get out!

[alsenior]

these would make very good myth tv front ends i think especially since they have hd decoding built in

[this_is_gav]

If the SSD drive in that cheapest one is the same as the SSD in the Aspire One it will be completely hopeless, bordering on totally unusable if you were to put XP on it.

Vista will be fine on the higher models. The only real hardware limitation in Vista is the hard drive, so unless this has got something ludicrously old and clunky in there, it'll be just as fast as a basic laptop. Fine for those who will use it.

Of course, Vista is really just a stop gap until Win 7 comes along.

[zephod]

I have had a fair amount of trouble playing 1080p files under linux over the last two years or so of trying to perfect my media PCs. To be brutally honest I still haven't built one that I'm totally happy with - on the other hand, there is now a niceish box in every room in the house (lol).

I'm not totally sure of the difficulty as the machines all play my test files under windows with MPC home cinema - I can't for the life of me work out why this should be better - excepting that the code seems to be spread across the cores more evenly with this setup. However, I still get skipping under linux when cpu load is <50%.

The only computer I have known to play flawless 1080p under linux was running a Q6600 and an 8800GS.

Now, before people shout at me, I don't think that this should be the case. My recent, and very nice HTPC build is a 780G/X2 5050e combination - which I reckon is more that capable of 1080p. Plays back my test files very nicely under PowerDVD9 and MPC but occasionally skips with VLC. Under linux, I can barely play back any of my 1080p files although 720p are all fine. I admit that the flaw here could infact be with the ATi linux drivers, which historically have been weaker than the nVidia equivalent, but I have a pc running an 8400gs that at last check was still struggling with 1080p under ubuntu with all the players I tried.

--- all I'm saying is that those people buying the £179.99 box might have to fight a bit to get it doing everything it claims. However, I'm hoping not. If the thing works I'll definately be looking at the Ion platform for a build or two - or possibly a miniITX LGA775 board and a suitable case, if reviews continue to suggest the atom is underpowered ---

Once I'm finished with this year at uni and have a summer to myself I plan to write up in full my experiences with these boxes and discuss Win7/Vista/XP/linux as an arugment. I also need to rewrite my 'build your own touchscreen' thread as that has moved on apace. I think I'll probably have some sort of Ion platform for comparison as well. So hopefully I can provide a decent helping hand for people wanting to place HTPCs around their home.

[MSIC]

Nice one Zephod, i look forward to reading all that in time to come.

[MSIC]

Also, regarding the original article's device, i'd say that the £179 plus an external (terrabyte?) hard drive would be the way to go surely...

[cptwhite_uk]

Surely the way to go would have been a £229 model with a 250Gb+ hard drive, linux (to keep cost down) and 2Gb RAM.

But instead we have the option of a pathetic SSD drive (yes I have the apsire one) that can hold an operating system, basics and not much else and struggles to do anything quickly or we folk out an extra £70 for a OS which will again cause unnecessary speed reduction on an already boardline spec system and a fairly measely 160Gb drive for a product which is meant to be ideal for a home media centre. Are they stupid or something?

[TheAnimus]

these would make very good myth tv front ends i think especially since they have hd decoding built in

Assuming that the decoding will have driver support.....

[directhex]

Assuming that the decoding will have driver support.....

Nvidia? Yes.

[TheBloodyNine]

Im tempted by one of these, but I think It would have to be the &#163;179 one, install XP and hook up an external drive for storage. But then the price is close to &#163;300.

I wonder how the machine would work as a Hackintosh?

[KingORoff]

I've an old lappy sitting useless with a working HDD and RAM...I wonder if I could grab one of the £180 version and replace the HDD (shove the SSD somewhere else hehe) and RAM...hmmm...could really be worth it.

[MadduckUK]

depends what you mean by old really...?

[MSIC]

Surely the way to go would have been a £229 model with a 250Gb+ hard drive, linux (to keep cost down) and 2Gb RAM.

Hmm, i'm not sure, although i think i can see your argument.
For me, i dont think that you'd need much more than 8 gig for the OS alone, and 1 Gig RAM with something like mythbuntu (for the adventurous) or that standard Linux OS should be more than enough (i know with my netbook, i have many firefox pages, songbird, pidgin, the update manager and skype at the same time running on ubuntu, and memory use still hovers at around 1/2 a gig.).
Stick all your data / photos / videos / music on an external drive, and you're away.

Then again, if that SSD really is that sloooooow, maybe a standard hard drive is for the best.

[Zadock]

I would be more interested in the £249 spec but minus Vista to knock a few quid off. I suspect that the reason for using Vista Home Premium is for the addition of the Media centre?