Viewsonic unveils its own teeny PC; possible DS player?

July 29, 2009 by Dave Haynes

I like to keep an eye on the little PC market, as small form factor is a big deal for many DS installs. Asus and a few other companies have been putting teeny little Intel Atom-based units out for a while now, and the people I know who have tested them as potential players have very mixed opinions about their capability. The biggest issue has been that the early versions of the Atom simply didn’t have the horsepower to drive smooth video and/or Flash. That and the units are very much consumer PCs, but then so is the Aopen unit so many companies use right now.

I wrote back in April about Acer coming out with a unit that could be a game-changer for the industry. 

The new Nvidia Ion graphics processor is now starting to show up in Atom units that have a more burly Dual Core CPU, including the one just introduced by Viewsonic.

Engadget is reporting the unit costs more than $500 US in Taiwan, which is arguably on the expensive side. But it IS very small, and that Ion should make it capable of playing full HD video. At that price I doubt it will generate a lot of interest (for another $100 you can get a Mac Mini and slap another OS on it) but if it gets south of $400, then it gets interesting.

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