Dell has taken its sweet time in bringing the 7.75- x 7.75- x 3.5-inch
Inspiron Zino HD to market, but just 24 hours after it made its market debut
across the pond, this little zinger is finally available to the Yanks in attendance. Starting at just $229, the mini PC is far more exhilarating than most ho hum nettops. Oh sure, the base configuration is fairly unexciting, but thankfully Dell enables you to add up to 8GB of memory, a 1.8GHz dual-core AMD
Athlon Neo X2 6850e CPU, up to 1TB of HDD space, an optional Blu-ray drive, a 512MB ATI Radeon HD 4330 discrete GPU and WiFi to the mix. 'Course, speccing it out will obviously raise the price substantially, but it's always nice to see more power than anticipated within such a minuscule box. Of note, Dell also mentions that an optional TV tuner, wireless keyboard and mouse are available, but at least for now, the TV tuner is nowhere to be found in the
configuration pages. Other inclusions are a 4-in-1 card reader, four USB 2.0 sockets and a pair of eSATA ports. Who says HTPCs have
to breathe fire?
Update: We've just heard that the TV tuner won't be available at launch (sounds a lot like what happened with the
Mini 10), so there goes those dreams of immediately gratifying your urge for a new HTPC of the smallest scale.
posted Nov 12th 2009 9:59AM
@Jim
"Mac Mini? Not at all. This supports double the memory and an HDMI port. The Mac Mini doesn't even have the option for BluRay or a native TV Tuner."
That's because its' a computer and a not a cable box. The CPU/GUP on this thing does not max the Mac mini. Nice colors tho. haha
Queue Mac Mini rip off comments in 3... 2... 1...
Iceman above beat you to it.
I see that... damn. By a matter of seconds it seems.
Asap as you get me a out of the box Mac-mini with BR let me know. Further the disign a square box might resemble a lot like the mini but then... damn isnt it so generic to design something box-like. It´s almost like the everlasting argument that a mobile looks like an iPhone.. its square and it has a screen. What´s more important what does it do and what can you get. And regarding this certainly for this price I think it´s a neat solution. Certainly if the options are avaible that are rumoured its obviously a Zino > Mini.
@JZ,
I'm sure you just wanted to get your little rant/whine into a higher area in the comments - but you're preaching to the wrong person. I don't care and haven't argued one way or the other. Personally, I have no use for either one. I just find it hilarious that so many people argue about something so ridiculous.
Oh, wait, it's the internet - that's why.
Yet here you are... arguing....
Ya, but not about Zino vs Mini... about him using my comment to piggy back his crap comment to the top.
It's so interesting. If it wouldn't be an obvious Mac Mini rip-off, you wouldn't have said that you expected comments about it. I think you comment is translated to English as "This is Mac Mini rip-off."
@Arial
Have you witnessed any of the other Zino threads here on Engadget? Have you read through them? They have ALL been "this looks like a mac mini" or "dell made a mac mini!" etc.
Honestly, once they offer an integrated TV tuner, I'm getting one and setting it up in my living room. I have always liked the idea of a Nettop/HTCP, and this will be the one for me, I think.
Too bad the media industry, colluding with Microsoft (and others) is stifling this technology so badly. Talk about organizations that need to burn to the ground...
I've been using the ASRock ION 330, which works really well with an external Hauppauge tuner and has no problem playing back even HD MKVs (and HD YouTube/Hulu will come with the GPU Flash update)...
http://www.rgbfilter.com/?p=1652
But I'd consider retiring (or moving) the ASRock for the Zino HD once they add the TV tuner and IR support out of the box. Keeping the base memory at 3GB, bumping up the processor to the Dual Core 3250e 1.5 GHz, adding the Radeon 4330 512MB graphics card and a BD/DVD combo drive prices this thing out at $604, which is a REALLY good deal, especially since the ASRock doesn't come with an OS out of the box.
The 3250e is a pretty stable overclocker too, and even at stock performs better than the Dual Core Atom 330. Seriously not a bad deal at all for any number of SFF uses.
Just use and HDhomerun. It is an awesome network based dual tuner, no need to have a tuner in the box, or even in the same room. Likewise if you want a CableCARD tuner, you can get USB versions.
damnit, put an intel chip in there so I can install Snow Leopard..
Yes because we all know that Snow Leopard's HTPC / Media Center features are like... nonexistent.
Front Row?
no you douche.. I am thinking CHEAP
@ Buddy Boy: You think Front Row compares to Windows 7 config'ed to switch between W7MC and Boxee?
I guess you've never really used a real media center. :)
@Alan Strangis
I didn't say it compared, but Andrea said "Media Center features are like... nonexistent" which is a blatant troll.
Plex.
Um...
2.1 sound card on an HTPC is a bit crap if you ask me. Gimme 5.1 or don't bother pretending this is a media centre solution.
let's say one wanted to use this as a blu ray player; if you used hdmi out, wouldn't it just become a moot problem?
yeah, and no spdif. not going to be an htpc any time soon.
I agree it's lame... but if you really want good sound quality from a PC, you need an external card anyway. Onboard and discreet cards always suffer from noise that external cards don't.
5.1 can be "software enabled" for $25. It's shitty that they're charging you extra to enable a chip that's already on the board, but I'm sure it can be easily worked around.
This is what happens when Ted Turner is involved. He colorized the Mac Mini!
You know ROFL, that was the complete opposite
Is the included gfx chip (not the upgraded one) good enough for smooth 1080p playback via the HDMI output or do we need to get the upgraded one? What about the CPU? Is the stock one good enough or do you need to choose on of the other options? Just want to know what the minimum requirement is for good BluRay/mkv 1080p playback without spending too much. If i don't need to upgrade the CPU or gfx chip then I would rather put the money into the harddrive capacity and of course the BluRay drive.
I'm wondering the same thing, can anyone clear this up?
from the site notebookcheck:
The HD 3200 was the first onboard graphics card that allows the fluent playback of Blu-ray videos.
http://www.notebookcheck.net/ATI-Radeon-HD-3200.9591.0.html
At $229 it does include an optical drive:
-8X DVD+/-RW Drive
Mac mini performance comparison, please?
On the base config, the Zino HD won't compare to the the Mini, but on a configuration that costs $604, or a whopping $5 (five dollars) more than the base $599 Mini you get this...
Athlon Dual core CPU performance that gets you about 75% of the speed (the Athlon outperforms the dual core Atom 330, but won't compare to a full blown Intel Core 2 Duos)
Radeon 4330 which outperforms the Mini's Nvidia 9400M by between about 30 and 80% depending on task
Double the hard drive space of the Mini
3GB memory on the Zino instead of 2GB on the Mini (the Mini uses 1066MHz though, instead of the 800MHz Zino)
Depending on what you want to use it for, it's a trade off. You'll get better raw CPU performance out of the Mini, but in every other respect, a Zino HD beats it. If you were planning on using Windows, then the Zino HD is a good deal overall, especially if you're a Blu Ray fan, or want to build a media PC and were previously thinking of something like the ASRock or the latest Revo.
Though the Zino really is a 'nettop' computer at its core, a few upgrades really gives it some oomph that Acer and ASRock haven't matched, at the same price as the ION 330 with Blu Ray.
Also, it looks nicer and you can ACTUALLY UPGRADE IT.
The look of the Mac Mini is far too dated. It hasn't changed at all since it started as the Mac Mini G4.
What's wrong with a "box"? The Mini external shape doesn't need updating. That's why Dell also made a "box". Boxes are good. You can stack them. They have flat sides to put connectors on. Sometimes it's best not to mess with what works. I hated those stupid Mac's that had rounded corners for no useful purpose. The first LCD iMac with the round base was also incredibly stupid, and the coup de grace was that see-though Macbook with rounded corners that made the whole thing about 50% bigger than it needed to be. Sometime Apple's style police need a leash.
That starting price is a lot lower than what I'm seeing on the webpage... I can't figure out how to configure it w/o a monitor though
Scratch that:
http://www.dell.com/us/en/home/desktops/inspiron-zino-hd/pd.aspx?refid=inspiron-zino-hd&s=dhs&cs=19&~oid=us~en~29~inspiron-zino-hd-anav1~~
They show it as low as $359 to start - but when I started the configurator thing, it dropped to $229 and the "no monitor" was by default.
does anyone know if the hdmi out also includes audio yet or is 2.1 all that we get?
Yeah it includes audio... The HDMI signal would does not go through the sound card at all. The sound card is merely for the standard audio jack.
I'm not sure this thing will do any more than 2.1... and that isn't even fair to say. The audio output jack looks like the standard headphone jack. I owned a Studio Hybrid and it was a bit more sleek. It had a slot loading optical drive and it also had an optical audio out.
This Inspiron Zino is too low end.
@ Franz: The HDMI out of the optional Radeon 4330 supports 7.1 AC3. I can live with that.
Try this:
http://configure.us.dell.com/dellstore/config.aspx?oc=ddcwua1&c=us&l=en&s=dhs&cs=19&kc=inspiron-zino-hd
don't go through the links provided here. i only found it by going directly to dell's website and digging through there.
http://configure.us.dell.com/dellstore/config.aspx?oc=ddcwua1&c=us&l=en&s=dhs&cs=19&kc=inspiron-zino-hd
was supposed to be @txphisher. looks like people beat me to it anyway. stupid unreliable comment system.
isn't your icon from that article engadget did about some creepy japanese bathroom stall cleaner? /shudder
INCORRECT! If you go look the starting price starts @ $359 not $229.
INCORRECT! If you read the other post before yours, you will figure out ;)