It appears to me you have two benefits listed that is driving your interest, lower power consumption, spend less on PCs.

I am in the middle of this very same thing (though we pay very little for power in Australia).

In short it seems to me that if you achieve the first you may be able to achieve the second benefit. However what appears to be holding you back is the IT policy which gets in the way of power saving through features such as hibernate, or sleep mode.

I would therefor look at the detail of your IT policy and what its rationale is. If it is to enable the delivery of software patches etc there are technologies you can use which to “wake up” PC's in lower power modes such as sleep or hibernate. I know this because we have recently gained significant power savings by employing these technologies.

As your country provides financial incentives for power saving you can use these funds (as you suggested) to help with the purchase of new PCs. These may not be ATOM powered devices but you are still achieving a power reduction and device cost saving. I suspect as Nettops develop they will be able to drive 2 monitors (perhaps the software above will help achieve this)?

- HP Mini 311 w/NVIDIA ION (NVIDIA GeForce 9400M)
- Asus Eee Top ET1602 w/Intel GMA 950 integrated graphics
- Gigabyte TouchNote T1028X w/Intel GMA 950 integrated graphics

I'm a power user, I code, I do 3d modeling, I run massive mathematical simulations. I'm not really going to be happy with a current gen Nettop, I get that.

My point was my Mother, whom I use as a baseline for the average computer user, wouldn't be either. She's not cutting edge at all. Dual screens, aren't just for the tech elite any more. These boxes need to meet current, and tomorrow user needs, not current and yesterday user needs, to be considered a true desktop replacement, otherwise anyone who buys one is going to end up tossing it in a few months, or relegating it to the kids.

This is sad. I really want the low power consumption space to work out, better than it seems to be. Our company could make a killing recommending something an aweful lot like a net top as a way to cut power consumption, during energy audits. On the face if you could get a system that could power two monitors for average every day stuff, do standard corporate sitting at a desk stuff, and could operate at less than 1w standby (because most corporate computers don't get turned off at night because of IT policy) and less than 50 under load, you're looking at a yearly savings of right around 150 dollars, a user, a year for a typical company in the US. That doesn't sound like much, but in a 100 employee company that's the cost of a few FTE's. Better still, it could rate the company for Energy Star, which would then get them some not inconsequential rebates from their power company, which would go a long way towards buying the machines themselves.

That said, they aren't there yet. That's my honest assessment.

It appears to me you have two benefits listed that is driving your interest, lower power consumption, spend less on PCs.

I am in the middle of this very same thing (though we pay very little for power in Australia).

In short it seems to me that if you achieve the first you may be able to achieve the second benefit. However what appears to be holding you back is the IT policy which gets in the way of power saving through features such as hibernate, or sleep mode.

I would therefor look at the detail of your IT policy and what its rationale is. If it is to enable the delivery of software patches etc there are technologies you can use which to “wake up” PC's in lower power modes such as sleep or hibernate. I know this because we have recently gained significant power savings by employing these technologies.

As your country provides financial incentives for power saving you can use these funds (as you suggested) to help with the purchase of new PCs. These may not be ATOM powered devices but you are still achieving a power reduction and device cost saving. I suspect as Nettops develop they will be able to drive 2 monitors (perhaps the software above will help achieve this)?

- HP Mini 311 w/NVIDIA ION (NVIDIA GeForce 9400M)
- Asus Eee Top ET1602 w/Intel GMA 950 integrated graphics
- Gigabyte TouchNote T1028X w/Intel GMA 950 integrated graphics

I'm a power user, I code, I do 3d modeling, I run massive mathematical simulations. I'm not really going to be happy with a current gen Nettop, I get that.

My point was my Mother, whom I use as a baseline for the average computer user, wouldn't be either. She's not cutting edge at all. Dual screens, aren't just for the tech elite any more. These boxes need to meet current, and tomorrow user needs, not current and yesterday user needs, to be considered a true desktop replacement, otherwise anyone who buys one is going to end up tossing it in a few months, or relegating it to the kids.

This is sad. I really want the low power consumption space to work out, better than it seems to be. Our company could make a killing recommending something an aweful lot like a net top as a way to cut power consumption, during energy audits. On the face if you could get a system that could power two monitors for average every day stuff, do standard corporate sitting at a desk stuff, and could operate at less than 1w standby (because most corporate computers don't get turned off at night because of IT policy) and less than 50 under load, you're looking at a yearly savings of right around 150 dollars, a user, a year for a typical company in the US. That doesn't sound like much, but in a 100 employee company that's the cost of a few FTE's. Better still, it could rate the company for Energy Star, which would then get them some not inconsequential rebates from their power company, which would go a long way towards buying the machines themselves.

That said, they aren't there yet. That's my honest assessment.

http://corecodec.com/products/coreavc

“Netbooks+CoreAVC=Sexy
Who said small Netbooks would never be capable of High Definition H.264 Video has never seen the power of CoreAVC 2.0 with Netbooks supporting NVIDIA CUDA Technology and ION based Netbooks like the HP 311 or the dual core hotness, that is the ASUS 1201N.”

Am I missing something?
Please remember some of us are just getting to grips with this stuff

In any case thanks for the quick response. I'm probably expecting too much from an ATOM processor, but I really do feel that if a nettop is going to replace any of our desktops it needs to be able to drive 2 displays at decent resolution. Even my Mother LOVES Dual screen and resents her laptop for not having that feature (come on dual screen laptops in the US!), and she's not exactly a bleeding edge computer user. Sadly that isn't something that currently seems possible, I really wish it were though, because I would definitely be willing to fork over money for a small, low power desktop that was able to compete with a standard desktop even if it cost moderately more than an equivalent desktop. I'm currently eyeing the Dell Zino with avid curiosity although i'm becoming resigned to the fact that I'm probably going to find a Mac Mini on my doorstep when it comes time to buy later this year. That said neither of those are ATOM based, and neither seem to be competing in the nettop space (although the Dell Zino certainly is in that price bracket), and sadly neither of them seem to sip energy from the wall socket like an Atom based system would, although I'm still trying to verify that fact as well.

I know I'm certainly not the target audience for a net top right now, it's just my two cents. Let me know if anyone disagrees.

Since the articles on Lilliputing and Engadget have the reason for the sluggishness yet been discovered?

Lastly, I would be interested to see what you think of the dual core ATOM/Nvidia ION netbook from Asus (1201n)