The Asus Eee Top ET2002T is an all-in-one desktop PC with a 20 inch, 1600 x 900 pixel display. But as I discovered when reviewing the 15.6 inch Eee Top ET1602 with its 1366 x 768 pixel display, high resolution displays and Intel Atom processors don’t always play well together. On the one hand, web pages and static images looked awesome. On the other hand, video (especially Flash) had trouble keeping up. I can only imagine things would be worse on the ET2002T with its even higher resolution display.
Fortunately, the ET2002T has two things the ET1602 doesn’t: A dual core Atom 330 CPU and NVIDIA ION graphics. Those might not be enough to make Hulu look good in full screen, but it should help the computer handle downloaded HD videos. There’s also a built in DVD burner if you want to watch movies from these old fashioned things called optical discs.
The computer has 2GB of RAM, a 250GB hard drive, and an HDMI input which lets you use the Eee Top as a display for a different computer. Blogeee reports that the ET2002T will be available in Europe within the next few weeks for about €598 or $846 US. So you have to wonder: Are people ready to pay that kind of money for any computer with an Intel Atom processor? Even one with a 20 inch touchscreen and NVIDIA ION?
dumb butt! the ion graphics can do 2 1080p streams at a time!
Price aside the word on the street (as far as I had heard) was that the Dual Core Atom was a poor performer for ‘everyday’ tasks. It preformed no better then a single core Atom running most software. Well unless you were running a program written to take advantage of multiple cores, which you won’t be unless you’re running MS Office or something.
To answer your last two questions Brad, in my option, I don’t think so.
$846 for an atom?
For a $1,079 (after mail in rebate, I’ll admit) you can get a 2.66 Core 2 Duo, 2GB of ram, Nvidia 9400M and a resolution of 1680 x 1050 from PC Conection. I’ve seen Pentium D and Core 2 Duo Sony Vaio AIO’s go for $850-$1000. And if you venture into the refurb market I’ve seen iMac’s and HP TouchSmart’s go for $700-900
Since no one else wants to pick at these nits – – –
nitpick 1: If that is a 20 inch display, that is one large keyboard.
nitpick 2: Is that other item a mouse or a sofa cushion?
Put a nice quad-core chip in it for that price and I’ll get one…