Acer's Aspire Revo 1600 might be the first Nettop we don't actively dislike. We'd rather have an Xbox 360 in the living room, but the Aspire Revo 1600 would be suitable as a PC for young kids or as a low-profile cloud kiosk. Thanks to its $199 price tag, you won't feel too much remorse if it breaks or you outgrow it.
Typically our challenges with the emergent Nettop category have been that real budget PCs cost just a little bit more and provide a dramatic performance uptick, and similarly priced Netbooks offer equivalent performance with the added benefit of portability. The Aspire Revo 1600's price tag alone answers those issues. As a traditional computer, the Aspire Revo 1600 is worth considering for use as a cloud-computing terminal or a PC for the kids to bang around on. Acer and Nvidia also want you to think of this system as a living-room PC, but that's a harder sell. A $199 Xbox 360 can perform the same digital-media tasks, yet also offers an optical drive and powerful gaming capability this Acer system can't hope to match.
Due to its low price, the Aspire Revo 1600 is easier to describe by the features it lacks. With no wireless networking adapter, you have to add one via a USB 2.0 port, or hard wire the system to your home network. The Revo also has no optical drive. The roadblock to disc-based software installation probably isn't the worst decision Acer could have made. Full-sized applications like games and digital-media-editing programs would quickly overwhelm the Revo's 160GB hard drive and its 1.6GHz Intel Atom N230 CPU. Acer also offers a 320GB model with higher specs for $329.
The lack of wireless networking also ruins the illusion that this compact desktop will somehow improve the aesthetics of your home because of its size. You still need to connect at least a wireless networking adapter, and the bundled wired mouse and keyboard add further tethered clutter. Acer has made the Revo 1600 VESA-mount compatible, which means that you can mount in on the back of any VESA-compatible LCD, effectively hiding the system out of sight. We suspect few of you will go to that trouble, but the option may have some appeal for those looking to maximize desk space. (source)
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