Digital Home Thoughts: Tom's Hardware Does Head-to-Head Nettop Comparison

"We put Giada's Slim-N20, Jetway's Mini-TOP, and Zotac's ZBOX to the test. Does Intel's Atom D500-series offer smooth performance in these nettops when it's paired with Nvidia's ION 2 graphics, or does the platform fall short of entertainment excellence? The nettop form factor is hard for the enthusiast community to swallow. On one hand, we want to love the fact that so much technology can be packed into such a small platform. On the other, it's frustrating to sit in front of a PC with so little performance compared to our full-sized (or even microATX) desktop machines."

Nettop computers - basically netbook desktops - are an interesting study in the "Good Enough" category. They have enough power for most tasks, excluding HD video editing and serious gaming. But for most productivity tasks, simple gaming (think browser-based), and email, the deliver in a small, quiet package. These three all look quite intelligently designed; the Acer Aspire R1600 I have has its audio input jack on the front - so if I want to connect speakers to it, I have to leave a cable plugged into the front of the computer. WHAT? Yeah, exactly.

Any Digital Home Thoughts readers own a nettop? What's your experience like with it?