1 month ago
AOpen Japan, have announced a new nettop called the XC Mini GP7A-HD (barebones kit) with a Core 2 Duo (Penryn) processor (up to 35W TDP) and NVidia ION graphics. Sounds like a powerhouse combination. No puny Atom processor here!
The >XC Mini GP7A-HD has got some heat pipe cooling going on inside and the Core 2 Duo needs a fan of it’s own. There’s a special BIOS setting [Silent & HD playback mode] to converse power consumption when watching movies. Has a DVD burner, card reader, 2x DDR3 RAM slots (4GB RAM max - for each slot I assume - it’s not clear), support for 2.5” SATA HDD or SSD, 2x mini PCI-express slots, 6 x USB 2.0, Gigabit LAN, eSATA, HDMI, VGA and audio jacks. Being a barebones kit, you’ll have to buy your own CPU, memory, HDD and OS. Oh, and Wi-Fi and antenna are not included. They are sold separately. Windows XP / Vista and Windows 7 are all supported. No word on Linux though.
The nettop measures 61 x 166 x 180mm in size. No pricing announced and it will be available mid-December.
How is this ion? Isn’t ion defined as a motherbord with Intel atom and a Nvidia GeForce 9400M making this an attempt to ride the hype of the Ion name?
Ps When are you going to post the HP dm-1 review? I want to buy one asap but I’m waiting for your review to make sure it is a good choice compared to the U150 (which hasn’t been released in my country yet)
ION is branding for the graphics chip, not in combination with Atom. In June, NVidia started to allow non-Atom CPU devices to use this branding but I’m unaware of any such products using the ION brand until this showed up.
http://netbooked.net/blog/nvidia-got-9400m-graphics-you-can-call-it-ion/
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As for my HP DM1 review.. I’m have three things left to do: confirm battery life benchmarks, test out Linux, post a video and then it’ll be up. I’m hoping to have it up on Sat or Sunday.
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Sounds pretty sweet! Hopefully this means we’re one step closer to getting a CULV + ION laptop too.
Could you get a Linux running on that machine?