Eagle-eyed readers may have noticed that one of the deals of the day this afternoon was for the Lenovo IdeaCentre C300 all-in-on desktop. And that means this computer, which was first announced in May, is now available and shipping.
The folks at Nettop Review have already managed to get their hands on one, and have posted a series of unboxing photos. The PC looks pretty good and has a decent assortment of ports. Somewhat surprisingly, it ships with a PS/2 keyboard instead of a USB model. I’m not surprised that this PC, which sells for as little as $400, comes with a wired mouse instead of a wireless one, but it’d look even nicer without that mess of wires hanging out in the back.
The C300 comes in a variety of configurations. The base model has a 1.6GHz Intel Atom 230 CPU and integrated graphics. But you can also get a pricier model with a dual core Atom 330 processor and and ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4530 graphics card.
I really want all-in-one nettop, but I too would like more power on the CPU and GPU side of things.
The fact is with an all in one power consumption isn’t as big of a deal, you want efficiency but your not ‘on the clock’ like a battery system forces you to be where a few saving power mean minutes and hours more use.
The very least I would want is double the CPU load and maybe three or four times the GPU load possible on my Samsung. In other words productivity applications running snappy, online streaming video without chugging, and the ability to play WoW, Battlefield Heroes, and Sims 3 in middle-settings playable form.
My questions is why don’t more nettops use something like a Core 2 Duo? Like I said you don’t need to save that much energy on a nettop. And yes the cost of a Core 2 Duo is twice as much (maybe more), but the benefits are huge in terms or processing power. A Core 2 Duo is two or three times better then a dual core Atom and thus worth the cost.
I agree, a wireless mouse (and keyboard) should be standard.
Still not thrilled with the idea of a Atom based desktop. I understand the concept of a low power desktop, but would be happier with a more powerful processor that throttles down when higher performance isn’t required. I am quite happy with the Atom in my NC10 though.