Intel's Atom — First Benchmarks and a Full PC Review

Barence writes "PC Pro has received, benchmarked and discussed the first Intel Atom processor to be seen in the wild. A full analysis of the Atom processor itself is accompanied by a full review of the first PC — yes it's a PC, not a laptop — to use one. The benchmark results are pretty much as expected, but it's the power savings that really excite. And as a rep from the PC maker, Tranquil, joked — they could have left the Atom CPU uncooled if they'd really wanted to prove a point, as it's the old graphics chip that produces 70% of the heat coming from the motherboard. Exciting times ahead for the upcoming Atom-based Eee and friends." MojoKid was one of several readers, too, to mention the upcoming Eee Box mini-desktop from Asus (also Atom-based), which is supposed to start from $299, writing "although the actual dimensions are listed, the image from ASUS' booth really gives a sense of scale. In the picture, the Eee Box is standing next to a paperback book."

Comments

Re:Microsoft as Hardware Cop?

[mikeabbott420]

A crude way to force more powerful machines to use Vista. They can't use Vista levels of bloat in the emerging niche of MIDs ( or whatever they're called this week) but they still want to force everyone else to buy Vista. A big part of the Vista bloat and driver problems is Microsofts dream of DRM controlling our computers so they can make deals with content owners. Thus Microsoft needs to limit user choice as much as they can because XP may be good enough for your needs but its DRM isn't good enough for Microsoft needs.