Every morning we struggle to stay awake while reading one copycat
netbook announcement after another, and, now that low-end desktops seem to be finding the same popularity, we've ordered a fleet of
coffee robots to keep eyes open at Engadget HQ. On the heels of unveiling its mildly interesting all-in-one
Neton series, MSI has followed up with the rather more generic D130 NetTop, featuring something MSI calls "Nordic Simple Style" (which they previously just called
barebones). Moving beyond appearances, the machine does seem like a decent package, sporting a mild but serviceable
Atom 330 processor, 2GB of DDR2 memory, a Super-Multi DVD burner, 7.1 output, and a meager 35W power consumption when operating at "full speed." Granted, that full speed won't do much for your 3DMark scores, but an expected $240 price tag should make it a good fit for anyone in search of a simple machine for desk or home theater.
[Via
I4U News, image courtesy of
TweakTown]
posted Jan 15th 2009 9:11AM
Well, good morning Tim, and thanks to your coffee robots, we are reading this now.
How can you call a PC that is unable to play back 720p movie without hiccups home theater?
I can't argue, its a very simple desk PC, almost perfect for small offices without the need of a large server. Almost because it could be cheaper. Like $99...
Its an Atom 330 DUAL CORE, using CoreAVC its MORE than enough to play back 720p h264 video. I should know i do it.
I was pretty sure that the single core Atom could play 720p, but not 1080p (not sure about 1080i). I'm sure that this Atom 330 would be more than capable of 720p. Still interested to know about the 1080p, though. If it will at least do 720p and 1080i, then it would be a great MythTV box if you use it with an HDHomeRun tuner.
Seriously neither Like_A_Glove or Engadget claimed that the NetTop (awesome word btw) was a home theater.. and it CAN playback 720p.
Nordic styling? Stop it already, perhaps Swedish styling, but us Danes are way more cool (I am .. of course kidding) -
My MSI wind can easily play 720p, Matroska style
The Atom 330 can handle 1080i, I am sure because the Wind could almost handle 1080i.
$240? wow that's tempting even by power-user standards (for just a side system or for a low end user). Throw linux on it and its set
$240 !! Amazing !!! I am definately getting one!
I love nettops......
I demand that your coffee robots bring me a brownie or cookie. When do they plan to put in the IV for the caffeine and adrenaline drip? Maybe they will just higher some little people to kick you guys in the shins when you start to drop off.
"The design displays a reserved personality to show calmness and a sense of individuality" - If ony there was Blu-Ray I could set one next to my xbox.
Well, given the fact that the drive looks to be just a standard bay, it probably wouldn't be too hard to install one yourself.
Although, I'm not sure if it'd make a huge difference to the video quality coming out of the box.
I have a $140.00 MSI Barebones that I picked up from Newegg I built as a home file/print server.
I built it just before Christmas.
2GB RAM, WinXP Pro running from a high-performance 16GB Compact Flash card and 2tb of hard disk storage spread out over two HDs.
It's also a perfect stand for a little 19" LCD HDTV that doubles as it's monitor.
The thing runs great and has been doing so 24/7 since I built it.
When the drives spin down and the printer goes to sleep my UPS tells me the thing draws about 35 watts or so.
They're easy to build and cleverly designed. I love mine!
Yes, it could make a perfect NAS, had MSi replaced the DVD Drive with an HDD mounting kit.
Good point.
They should offer a faceplate and an adapter mounting kit as an option.
How did you build XP-Pro into the system for a total cost of $140?
Arr! You not be asking such things!
The box itself was 140.00.
Everything else was extra.
-genius.
Hey its a PS2! oh wait.
That's the side effect of been an one-eyed pirate.
I thought it was a PS2, too. And I be havin' both me eyes!
Yar, but you're a pirate too, it might have something to do with been a pirate, who knows.
ThinkCentre, anyone?
This could be a nice hackintosh if it worked as well as the wind netbooks.
I have almost this same set-up running iDeneb. Works better than my Wind Netbook's install. But it has the same sound card. There's no OSX support for it. I imagine this machine has the same. But yeah it runs pretty well, and $240 is a steal. My machine was about $200 altogether but still this thing is prebuilt. What a deal. Let's hope it's true.
Kinda like how nettops, netbooks are so revolutionary*, but no-one ever brings up thin-clients, which are almost the same thing. I know I know, but cant be dismissed.
Yeah but this comes with an optical drive, sound card (only on select thinnies), and presumably (although I can't find any specs on it) a hard drive.
God, their electric savings are horrible. Based on a rate of $2.1 / KwH? Does anyone actually pay a rate that high? Looks like HI is the highest, but still on $0.23 / KwH. Saves $4,900 in electricity. What bull.
Those aren't US dollars they're quoting... notice they say the price of the computer is NT$7500 - NT$8000. What's an NT$?
Converting NT$7500/US$240 means the yearly energy savings more like US$156.80. (Where electricity is US$0.0672 per kWh).
The key information missing from this is whether or not it has HDMI or an equivalent interface.
That looks like an ideal grandparent computer.
Finally, I've been waiting for 330 based machines to get serious, yeah there have been a few around based on the spec motherboard, but the spec motherboard is *ahem* less than I would hope for. Hopefully MSI has enhanced it a bit - the price is certainly in the right neighborhood.
1997 called and wants its design back.
I have the 1rst gen of these. My Kill-a-Watt measures 23W when the hard drive is idle, running XP off the motherboard's on-board compact flash slot. 30w with the hard drive spinning.
It's a great box for use as a server/nas/divx video player, but it cannot handle Hulu HD and it just barely handles youtube when connected to my TV at 1280x720. I don't think the new Atom processor will be all that helpful here, what it really needs is better graphics.
That's odd, because Atom processors have shown they can handle 720, and with a little extra ram, 1080 as well.
Dual core, would theoretically make it better at that, and 2GB of ram instead of the 1GB that comes with most netbooks.
Either way, I'm liking the way this trend in computing is going. I'm going to set my parents up an HTPC soon, and this is great news.
I have the 2nd gen MSI Nettop (Atom dual core 330) and I have been using it both as a server and HTPC and I am really surprised by it's performance. It plays Hulu HD and Youtube HD without any problem. I tried playing 1080p contents from Apple Trailers and it handled them perfectly. Just FYI: Flash players are not good for handling HD contents because they put too much load on the processor. Youtube's flash player uses 90% processor load to play a 720p video while if you play the offline version of the same video using VLC (FFDshow) it takes only 50% of the processor load. I am pretty sure your MSI (230) can handle offline 720p video without any issue.
Oohh a perfect Boxee/XBMC box....
Perfect Windows HomeServer starter hardware right here! 35W is great for that!
yea but there be no room to add HDD's, thats the only thing that sucks, not unless your doing external. i do like this thou.
Atom 330 ...hmmm where have i seen that before? Oh ya...nVidia's ION. NEXT generation of this could be interesting.
Nice, but I'm more interested in the Eee Keyboard PC.
Think in terms of how much you save in power costs at 35 watts. There is huge value in having upgrades to desktops that use sooo much less power.
This is so far from Nordic styling as it gets. In fact, I would argue that this piece of junk isn't styled at all.
The single core version of this 120,
http://global.msi.com.tw/index.php?func=prodtmpspec&maincat_no=134&cat2_no=&cat3_no=&prod_no=1594#
supports 2 SATA II devices, so I'm guessing there's space for two 3.5" drives in there. If so it will make an excellent NAS with raided drives and I'll say goodbye to my thecus box....