There’s nothing all that special about yet-another-nettop with a dual core Intel Atom 330 processor and first generation NVIDIA ION graphics. But the folks at Chinese company Nova are putting some effort into making their low power mini-desktop stand out.
The Nova Coloured Glaze nettop features a clear (or tinted) chunk of plastic at the front, giving the machine a bit more visual appeal than your typical desktop computer covered with shiny or matte plastic. Sure, the translucent bit is 100% decorative and serves no actual purpose — but it might make the nettop look a little better in your living room, which is where Nova hopes you’ll use this computer.
The nettop supports up 4GB of RAM and comes with hard drive capacities up to 500GB. It can run Windows XP or Windows 7. Interestingly, the spec sheet also mentions DOS, although I think you’d probably have more fun with this system if you installed a more up to date operating system such as Ubuntu Linux.
The NVIDA GeForce 9400M graphics processor should allow you to watch 1080p HD video and the computer has both VGA and HDMI outputs as well as an SPDIF output for audio.
Engadget Chinese has posted some hands-on photos of the Coloured Glaze computer. You can also see some more promotional shots at the Nova web site.
via Engadget
It does make it look different and if you are trying to market to living rooms,
that alone could make a difference.
Add a few blinking leds to light up the chunk of plastic on the front. . . .
Hmm…
Could I cast my O!Play into a clear chunk of cold-pour Acrylic?
Turn it into a “designer’s statement” rather than another black box.
Naw, would probably melt its way out of the plastic block as soon as I turned it on.
DOS is there for older vertical apps: POS terminals and the like. They want cheap replacement devices so they don’t have to rearchitect their systems. Basically, any system available today for $100 will do.
That’s a good point. These machines would be excellent in that capacity.