The Ashes

The fastest Atom-based number-crunching, graphics-pounding package in our current timespace is the Acer Aspire Revo; that’s it, that’s what we are saying. This thing is chock full of transistors and heck-bent on delivering a screaming, joy-riddled experience to its lucky, quasi-elite owner base. In underground industry jargon, the Acer Aspire Revo is a nettop; that is, a miniature desktop PC with a sleek, portable form factor that’s geared towards web-based applications and Internet-based multimedia functionalities. Also in this little niche genre of desktops is the Asus Eee Box, a popular, inexpensive and intentionally underpowered mini PC.

Inside, we’re looking at an Atom 230 processor, a maximum of 4 GB of RAM, a commodious quarter-terabyte of storage, and powerful nVIDIA Ion graphics. Sources indicate that intensive multimedia applications still chug along with noticeable, halting hitching – a symptom, familiar to netbook aficionados, of the lightweight arrangement under the hood – and there’s appreciable lag on the gaming front, enough to be a prohibitive hindrance. We’re excited, as we’re wont to be, but we’ll guard our trigger-happy shopping finger for now; we’d like to hear more user reports before we move forward with this juicy acquisition.