Microsoft places stamp of approval on Vista-based Ion SFF PCs
By Darren Murph 
posted February 11th 2009 11:11AM
posted February 11th 2009 11:11AM
posted February 11th 2009 11:11AM
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If less is more, then just imagine how much more 'more' will be!
If they can pull it off, I'd be interested. And with Windows 7 around the corner, it will probably run even better on these rigs.
I find it difficult to accept the fact OS will be costlier than the hardware. =(
Wow, where are you paying $300+ for any OS, let alone Windows 7? Don't be stupid. The stories about 7 costing that much were retracted and obviously very unlikely
@tom
Windows OSes cost a lot individually. When they are preinstalled, they are practically giveaways (initial crapware installs = reduced OS price).
If you build your own computer. How do you manage to get an OS pre-installed? You have to get OEM version at least.
i do not think fan is acceptable any more these days
@Bobby:
While I wholeheartedly agree fans should be by-gones for more silent solutions, I fear SFF builds may be the exception due to their size and lack of sufficient air flow.
@tom
I am sure the $300 Ion they specify is for an OEM build.
no kidding... I want to see Windows 7 running on a dual CPU Nehalem system with 6 channels of RAM
How big is the power brick?
This is so going to be my Car PC!!!!
No more need for a Jet Engine Fans to cool my laptop anymore!!!
I really want my Ami to be the best car ever!!! ...
Ohh yea!!! attach that 7inch monitor b selling round.... to that sucker n put it on the car??????
NAH!
lets go for a 24 incher n replace those stupid 7 inch monitors preinstalled on minivans w dvd players......
wait a minute....... wheres the RAM? n network for this baby?????
This is my next platform
Just throw an Xbox or PS3 in your car and call it a day...
Do want at $299. I can see these things becoming just as ubiquitous as netbooks.
Such bs that the new Apple mini will likely cost exactly twice that.
$299 is just such a sweet price point! Hopefully it comes with a 500gb hdd and 4gb RAM, since these are both dirt cheap these days. I'd even pay $399 for one w/ this stuff, lol.
I'm not a big fan of converging electronics; but with hardware that small, a TV/Computer product would not be difficult to make.
HMMM. Though I like the idea of Blu Ray playback on a netbook, I have to wonder where this is going. Anyone else notice that:
1) Most netbooks have absolutely NO optical drive at all so you're talking about playing from images or other 1080p files, but not actual discs.
2) Blu Ray drives are expensive. So even if you could cram Ion into a netbook for $299 AND you could shoehorn an optical drive into it, you're looking at somewhere in the neighborhood of $450 for a netbook with said drive. Also, consider that, at best, you're looking at the device having a 720p capable display so this benefits users only via HDMI out.
I get the feeling that an Ion-based netbook w/ a 720p display and HDMI out and a Blu Ray drive will come in at around $700. No longer w/in the netbook pricepoint range any more, is it?
According to Sony you still would be in the netbook price range
Imagine it as more of a Mac Mini form factor, rather than as a netbook, and you can see its place as part of an entertainment center.
@Xoyuji
i see what you did there...
and lol'd
Want for $299 (with W7)!
From reading other articles about the Ion platform I think they mean that it will play back HD content smoothly (1080p), not necessarily a Blu Ray disc.
We'll return to tonight's movie "The Littlest Server" after this...
blu-ray players and media have been in the market since June 2006. there are now about 11 million in US households.
can we finally declare this insignificant technology dead yet? for one, no one uses it. for two, no one should care if it can be played on a low-res, super-mini netbook with no optical drive. duh.
as for desktop and home theater pc's, i think most would prefer to download a movie than buy yet another disc. sorry, but only a statistically insignificant number of people want to chat while watching their blu-ray movie. add to that, the majority of viewers cant even distinguish between SD and HD while believing that Monster Cables will make their 1980's CRT "digital ready".
tech used to be so much more exciting when innovation started at the top and trickled down... now, the "innovation" seems to be limited to putting useless features into bottom-end junk, e.g. HD movies on netbooks, pocket sized printers for cameraphones, cellphone projectors.
this "One Netbook Per Hobo" ideal is pretty noble and all, but it's obviously run its course for innovation when we've gotten to a point where engineers are trying to make them able to run Crysis on an 8.9" screen or display a 1080P BD movie without enough pixels OR an optical drive.
damn, i'm grumpy this morning. :D
i guess my point is this:
ya know how at CES they have that one wing reserved for all the Chinese vendors and their ridiculous crap, like a 43 in 1 mp5 player? that is where the netbook craze has gone. it's the cheap Chinese junk that everyone mocks, but in this case, it has suddenly gone mainstream.
ugh.
Absolutely. I'll continue to only download and stream my HD content as long as Time Warner doesn't cap bandwidth in my market. If they do that, then I'm not sure what I'll do. I don't fancy paying more for my bandwidth in these economic conditions.
Completely disagree. BD is the new standard physical format for movies. If people start building a collection of BD's, and they want to watch it on the go, they would be out cold without a BD drive. Considering the popularity of portable DVD players that have smaller screens, it makes sense that people would want to watch movies on their netbooks. Yes, you are losing a bit of the HD by watching it on a laptop that is less than 1080, but they are all better than SD.
Not to mention BD players have all the functionality of a DVD player.
Finally, as for the format itself, BD didn't sell well at first (in 2006/7) because it had a very long battle with HD-DVD. The prices of the movies are still a bit high, especially for the economic condition. The prices are starting to come down, though. DVD has been around for 10 years, so naturally, BDs are going to have a while before their prices will fall that far. BDs do have the best possible picture available for average consumers, as downloads, cable, satellite, and on demand are all compressed formats. Compression seems to have gotten better in the past year (or maybe I'm just getting used to it), but you can still see artifacts here and there.
Physical media will never die out no matter how popular digital distribution becomes, and without BD, we'd have no physical media for HD content.
Put a 330 in there (dual-core Atom) and I'd buy the freaking engineering sample. I'd love to have one of those things plugged into my TV. Shame it'd probably cost more than a cheap PC plugged in.
They are, the Ion platform is the Atom 330 with 9400.
I agree with many of the other commenters: this much graphical power serves little purpose for a netbook. Aside from assiting GPU acceleration in the OS (like Vista, Win7, and I guess OS X) no one will probably try to play a computer game on such a small screen. However, I do other purposes:
1. With the included HDMI out, you can hook the cpu to an external monitor, creating a better gaming environment (bigger screen + modest graphics)
2. HTPC's!!! Maybe I represent a small niche, but I can't wait for the Ion + Windows 7 to come out (or possibly switch to a new Mac Mini as long as it's reasonably priced.) Low Power, good graphics, small package - this platform can serve more purposes outside of the netbook market. Think about it.
My new XBMC platform. Make it so!
This is the platform around which HTPC's will finally start to penetrate the mainstream.
absolutely!! This platform will about as popular with netbooks as current netbooks platforms are with "nettops". They exist, but not mainstream.
The Ion platform should stay in the htpc category and should have had Microsoft salivating at their first mention. For years MS has tried to break into the living room, with such forays as big media center pc's costing in excess of $1000. The xboxes gave MS living room cred, but what they really want/need is a full fledged windows box for mainstream use attached to your TV. Just as the Atom opened up a whole new category of portable computing, I think the ion platforms have the potential to open up a whole new category of casual living room computing. Marketed correctly, MS could have a real winner here. A STB that's not a computer, but can act as one when needed and seamlessly integrate with your other computer(s) (running another licensed copy of windows, of course)
Crossing my fingers that I'll be able to pick one up sans the Microsoft tax. NVidia's vdpau support for Linux will make this thing quite the lovely multimedia frontend, i.e. MythTV, MPlayer, VLC, etc.
I agree. On these lower-powered devices that just scrape enough processing power to handle 1080p video, why not run Linux (since it's a much more resource-efficient OS) and turn it into a well-performing appliance. Maybe run XBMC or something. Sweet.
@Juan: Another USB port, VGA, DVI, HDMI, and network are on the other side. Hit the Read link.
Though I don't see the RAM either; all I can figure is that it's on the flip side of the daughter card, maybe with a pass-through hole through the larger board and under the hard drive.
There is a so-dimm slot on the under side of the motherboard
Nvidia's ION looks to be a watershed event. Ultra-cheap computers have long been able to handle office tasks, but soon they will be able to rock multimedia and games. HTPCs, media extenders, and consoles should be worried.
See which come to market first!
Ion or EeeBox B204, B206 (with ATI Radeon HD 3400 series + 256MB DDR2 memory)
I would love to see this in the MSI Wind Netbox. Bolt it on the back of my Large screen LCD, and my living room would have something to get excited about. Take that AppleTV without Hulu!
Too powerful to get XP certification?
im very impressed, will this technology work with other OS like linux?
Throw in a C2D 2..4 GHZ Proc, add displayport, a Superdrive, TND 13" LED Backlit Display, keyboard, 1.3mp webcam, Multitouch Trackpad, presumably more ram (4GB DDR3), HDD Bump (250GB), Mac OS X. 6 cell battery, backlit keyboard, a few ports give or take, maybe faster busses (1067mhz), 2.1 built in speakers, and aluminum an housing and you have got my $2000 CAD Unibody MacBook. Yes, I paid $2000 for netbook class hardware, yet it as said, performs well, and looks good doing it. Also, not to mention Apple has largely corrected it's labour and enviornmental issues. Lond way to go, but read this: