Good Gadgets Come in Small Packages
Oct 12th, 2009 by Ealeal
One of the most rewarding purchases of the year in my “little black book of tech” was the Mac Mini, Apple’s small, magical box which now serves as my home entertainment HQ. However, being that I’m often reprimanded by “PC types” for being blinded by my love for Apple, I figured it’s high time to head out there and check out what alternatives are available for those of us who aren’t zealous believers in The Cult of Mac. Always assumed that a high-performance, high-definition PC could be anything but affordable? Guess again.
Thanks to HotHardware.com, I encountered the NVIDIA Ion Small Form Factor PC Platform – a palm-sized mini PC, which while not designed in Cupertino to the best of my knowledge, still offers some pretty heavy-duty performance: utilizing Intel’s 1.6GHz Atom 330 processor with support from NVIDIA’s GeForce 9400M core logic MCP with 16 integrated GeForce graphics cores (can we say, WOW?!), NVIDIA’s Ion is set to blow many a desktop PC out of the water. Factor in the full HD video hardware power and DX10 gaming support, and I’m a happy camper. NVIDIA claims the ION platform to be the “world’s smallest fully-capable PC” – and although the Mac Mini has a place of honor in my living room, looks like with these kind of claims and with moderate pricing, it’ll be hard to stay away from the ION when it’s time to shop around for a new computer to add to my entertainment lab. Check it out below, and let your mind be blown away:
Gamers will be thrilled with the Ion platform’s power and portability, while video fanatics will benefit from top-of-the-line video transcoding performance. All in all, the bottom line is that with this tiny tech wonder, NVIDIA are not only raising the bar for smaller, modestly priced PC platforms, but are also rallying up their ammo for a serious fight against Intel – after ousting Intel’s chipsets from Apple’s new range of notebooks, it’s pretty clear where the battle is headed. In the meantime – and please keep this in mind when it’s time shop around for holiday gifts – this sleek little baby seems to scream, “make me your home media center!”
