So today I received the Viewsonic VOT132. The first review I saw on it came from Engadget a couple of days ago. They praised among other things the design and it's speed with regard to 1080p playback. To be honest I was won over by the design. Put simply the thing looks great. I'm an undercover minimalist, and this thing screams elegance through simplicity.Rocking (yes, maybe too big of a word considering we're still talking about an Atom processor) a dual-core Intel Atom 1.6Ghz processor and the new Nvidia ION chipset this little wonder has already impressed me with it's overall zippy-ness. I'm a big fan of UMPCs, Hantops, whatever you want to call them, and as a result my patience with these types of processors is probably a little higher and more forgiving in general. (I've owned an OQO 01, 02, and still have a Fujitsu P1510D) Comparing this directly to my lifebook's (the P1510D) performance, I'm impressed. It is way faster. I'd say about 200% faster.
The rest of the specs are: 2 gigs of 800Mhz RAM, 320 Gig SATA Hdd (not sure on the RPMS and if it is SATA 3.0 Gbs yet), has 6 USB ports, 5 in 1 card reader, wi-fi b/g/n, 10/100/1000 ethernet, DVI out, and HDMI, plug a SPDIF plug. The HDMI will do 1080p with full audio, and it does it well.
A lot of people have complained about the pricing. Frankly I think it's justified. You're not just buying a small computer. It has a global impact as well. Green computing is the advertising slogan, I believe, but it's true. The power brick is rated at 65watts max, and should only normally pull down about half of that. When idle you're looking at around 5-12 watts. Given the size, and yes, once again, the design I feel it is priced right.
I'm also impressed with Viewsonic in general. Their foray into the computing side of the industry looks to be promising.
The sole purpose for this little computer was to be a media workhorse, a download machine that I wouldn't mind leaving on 24/7 (when theres something to download), but most importantly my VNC server. I plan to use this while on the road to work on code, work on some last minute 3d modeling, or anything I please while being anywhere.
I really do like this little PC. Have question, ask away.
Matt-Fu
How does it do with streaming video over the internet? Would it work well as a media center PC in my living room?
ReplyDeleteSorry for the late reply. It's designed to be a media server, so yes it would do well. I use it to watch our ripped DVD collection (we own all of the movies). Streaming video over the internet would be ok, if we had better bandwidth going up. We don't, so it sucks, but apps and such run fine with a reasonable delay.
ReplyDeleteI use RealVNC and their display capture driver is very efficient at capturing only changes.