back to article Acer Ubuntu nettop to get quiet storage switch

Acer's Nvidia Ion-based micro desktop PC, Revo, will go on sale in the UK on 5 May, with Ubuntu Linux among the available operating systems. Open source software fans shouldn't rush to the shops, though - Acer expects to tweak the Ubuntu machine's spec very shortly after release. Acer's Revo: SSD on board... for now The £ …

COMMENTS

This topic is closed for new posts.
  1. Steven Raith
    Thumb Up

    Really? £150?

    Blimey, I do believe I have just found my new FTP/Web/file server host. Bung an eSATA drive on it, Rsync it up to a USB drive for redundancy, and you're sorted.

    I likey.

    Steven R

    [has a Q6600@3.6ghz/4gb/4850 for stuff that needs grunt]

  2. Dave
    Stop

    Psion?

    as if stealing the netbook trademark wasn't enough now they are having revo too?

  3. Richard

    SSD

    I prefer the idea of the SSD version. Small, cheap, silent, powerful (enough). Network HDD for the big file storage

  4. John Robson Silver badge

    Hmm

    Drool.

    Attempt to justify......

    Hmm, I wonder....

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Up

    Re: Really? £150?

    I'm with you on this - less than £150 for a WLAN and G'bit capable box is a steal. Heck, if I was to get sick of the SSD, then I'm sure I've got the odd ex-lappy SATA drive I can lay my hands on - that said, last time I looked a 160GB 2.5" drive was only just over £30 - so it's not a deal breaker. Where'd I leave that screwdriver set...? ;-)

    On the other hand - why rsync - bung your disks in

    http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Thecus-N2050-Blue-DAS-eSATA-Hardware-Raid-2-x-SATA-SATAII-HDD-to-USB2-SATA-Dual-Mode

    and you've got a RAID1 h/w protect for your data, (and I'm sure that's it's possible to LiveCD boot off of a USB key for the Acer - so it'll be possible to 'protect' the OS too - how cheap are 8GB keys these days).

    Or, if you'd prefer laptop drives for your data, then there's

    http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Jou-Jye-ST-2220SUESR-mobile-RAID-BOX-(StripMirrorplus-More)-also-JBOD-for-2-x-25-HDDs

    (Apologies for using Scan for both, but their website is high up on my bookmarks and they'd got a good range).

    Me definitely likee very much! :D

    Of course, you realise that Acer will see these comments and immediately add another £50 to the price - supply and demand! :-(

    Bob

  6. Paul
    Linux

    And MythTV

    At that price I'm going to use it for some MythTV frontends as well - oooh, the digital revolution is just round the corner (How much bandwidth am I going to be using now with a few of these eating up iPlayer?)

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Heart

    MythBuntu

    At last, something cheap enough and hopefully well spec'd enough to run MythBuntu.

    At first I was going to say bah no DVI, but hey it has HDMI so it would make a lovely little MythTV box. Just bung on MythBuntu, plug in a couple of USB Freeview sticks (or USB satellite tuner) and away you go.

    Heck, this thing with a couple of DVB-T2 or DVB-S2 tuners would even probably do HD playback.

    (And for those of you who don't want Linux, with Vista it'll probably make a half decent Vista Media Center box).

    Rob

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Down

    Still made in Taiwan

    Why insist on using cheap plastic casing? No way this will be in my living room.

  9. BOBSta
    Gates Horns

    Low spec Linux - WHY?

    Why do all PC manufacturers spec their Linux installed boxes lower than the equivilent Windoze offering, then only shave a few pounds off the price? Why can't we just have the same HW spec as Windoze?

    Sure, Linux might run better on lower spec HW than Windoze, but that doesn't mean it has to be limited by it? How about more disk space for all that data, and more memory to help the O/S out?

    Or are they ALL tied in to some non-MS hardware performance tax?

    And, why is it so SO hard to find a Linux box on manufactuers on-line stores? - anyone followed the link from the OpenSolaris website to check out the spec of Toshiba laptops with OpenSolaris pre-installed? The Tosh website claims ignorance!

  10. FaberfoX
    Go

    @BOBSta

    Dude, the 100 pounds of difference buys a lot of 1GB DIMMs to get it up to spec to the windows version. And for myth or xbmc, 1GB, ditching the window manager should be more than enough.

    I want 2 of these now!

  11. Ken Hagan Gold badge
    Linux

    Noise?

    "I prefer the idea of the SSD version. Small, cheap, silent, powerful (enough)."

    Probably not silent. I have an SSD Aspire One from the same company and there's a whiny CPU fan. Mind you, if this new box *were* silent then it *would* be a fantastic PVR. I wonder how much it would add to the price for Acer to go fanless? I wonder if their product managers realise the opportunity here?

  12. Thomas Jolliffe
    Thumb Down

    @BOBSta

    Probably because there are people like you still calling an OS that, whether you like it or not is still the market leader, 'Windoze'.

  13. Steven Raith
    Paris Hilton

    @Ken Hagain

    Actually, you can get a bit of software for the Acer Aspire One that allows you to control the fan very well - to the degree that unless you try to re-encode video on it, the fan stays silent. IE off. It's terribly good.

    if Acer can keep the same SMBUS then there's no reason that this wee box can't be just as silent and never really get too noisy when running as a basic net browser, and have it warm up a little when runnning video, and so on.

    Steven R

  14. Chris
    Linux

    Bad incentive

    That's a bad incentive for Linux lovers, isn't it?

    Why would I want to buy the 8Gb version when I now know that it will be superceeded (IMO) very quickly with a 160Gb HDD?

    So, all the Linuxers who know this won't buy it, the early stock won't be depleted and then upped spec won't be available :(

    Kudos for Acer for supporting Linux so readily, but like someone else said why not do it across the range...?

  15. Chris Hardy
    Thumb Up

    MythBuntu anyone?

    I hope this will be powerful enough to run mythbuntu - i could do with replacing my aging shuttle :D

    NFS will deal with storage onto the main machine

    This will defo be on my shopping list when payday comes round :D (oh wait.. i'm self employed.. PAYDAY!!!)

    c

  16. Another Anonymous Coward
    Linux

    £149, job's a good 'un. :)

    I'll be buying one to use as my 24/7 machine and resigning the faithful tower for heftier stuff. About time we got a computer for the recession.

    Makes sense at that price as a replacement for a more power-hungry 24/7 machine - it'll only take a year or so to pay for itself in terms of electricity bills.

    Might get one for my dad, too.. he's a pretty simple user prone to wrecking PCs by installing everything off of dozens of computer magazine/ newspaper CDs without knowing what they are and never removing them. And that's without access to the internet... Linux should curb a few excesses, it's a good "save people from themselves" OS.

  17. steogede

    Re: Still Made in Taiwan

    No way it is going in your living room? Does it matter what it looks like when it is this small. You can either use the VESA mounting on your TV to mount it on the back of your TV, or if your TV is mounted on the wall, stick the Revo somewhere else it won't be seen

  18. Andrew Barratt

    Good price point

    for £150 this makes a nice price for a linux mce client. you could just hide it behind a tv/monitor.

    bish bosh

    job done.

  19. Goat Jam
    Linux

    LOL

    Let's look at the major components affecting the build cost of this little beauty here shall we?

    First, there are the hardware manufacturers;

    Hardware (Retail value £150)

    Acer: design, test, certify, manufacture, market, distribute, support and warranty the unit.

    Intel: design, test, manufacture and warranty the CPU

    Nvidia: design, test, manufacture and warranty the Chipset (and possibly motherboard)

    Seagate et al: design, test, build and warranty the HDD

    Hynix et al: design, test, build and warranty the RAM

    Various others provide components etc

    All these guys put considerable money and effort into designing and producing all the hi tech components that go into making this little beastie and get to share in 60% of the sale value.

    Then we look at the software side of the sale;

    Windows Vista (Retail value £100 according to the price differential given)

    Microsoft:

    1) Fail utterly to produce Longhorn

    2) do a last minute facelift on a then six year old OS, producing the shiny turd that is Vista

    3) Handball the support costs to the OEM

    4) Disclaim any responsibility for product failure via exclusionary EULA (ie: Warranty? We say pah! to warranties)

    5) Demand compensation for 40% of the value of the sale because they can!

    6) $$$ profit! $$$

    Now, I know I was working on retail pricing which is not the same as cost pricing but the ratio of software to hardware "value" is obvious.

    Seriously, who outside of the MS army of shills, fanbois and NASDAQ investors can justify taking such a highly extortionate slice of the pie here? For what exactly? A slipshod, rushed out facelift to an aged OS? Take away the billions they blew on the most epic of all epic fails that was Longhorn then will someone please explain to me what of value they have actually contributed with the Vista product, a product that (should have) cost them relatively little to produce compared to the costs of designing and manufacturing hardware from scratch that will have an expected sales life measured in months?

    The good news of course is that now that manufacturers have no excuse for putting XP on their tot PC's, they will end up pricing Microsoft way out of the market unless Uncle Fester and co decide to drop the prices of their company supporting cash cow to compete. Yes I realise that W7 has a netbook version that will I expect be cheapish but it will also be crippled and probably annoy people enough for them to switch to either Ubuntu or a pirated copy of windows. Except for the most 'tarded of the Wintards who will quite happily fork over more cash to the Beast of Redmond and thereby paying for the same product twice.

  20. Eric Van Haesendonck
    Thumb Up

    will be gread with VDPAU

    What is very interesting is that now a some Linux media players like VLC are supposed to support VDPAU, which is the Nvidia video acceleration for Linux.

    With a VDPAU enabled player you should be able to decode 1080p HD video smoothly on these babies. Now all we need is a proper Blu-ray player software for Ubuntu (so that we don't have to mess with keys to play movies we legally buy).

    BTW, I have an ubuntu 8.04 netbook with 1 Gb ram and the paging file is almost never used (well, if I open the GIMP, Inkscape, Firefox, a media player and a few nautilus windows all at the same time it is sometime used a little bit, but we are already into power used territory here), so 1 Gb is probably more than enough for most uses.

  21. Jack
    Thumb Up

    Mythbuntu? Try Minimyth

    This little box is going to replace my old diskless Mini ITX box.

    Minimyth is built solely around the Myth frontend, boots across the network and uses no local storage on the client machine.

    What I would love would be if it would be possible to pair this with a RF/Bluetooth remote and trigger a power on via the remote button (something I've thus far failed with the Mini ITX).

This topic is closed for new posts.

Other stories you might like