Yes, yes, yes. Check out this prototype from VIA. It’s a hybrid tablet PC netbook. The screen pops out of the main body and functions as an Android tablet and when docked back into the body — in this case, an HP Mini 1000-series netbook — it runs XP.
VIA’s “How To Be Mobile” blog takes a look at the Dr. Mobile Freestyle 1300n series of netbooks powered by, of course, the VIA Nano 1.3GHz CPU. The 1300n is an 11.6-inch machine with a 1366×768 resolution, weighs just under three pounds, and is less than an inch thick.
VIA’s got a new fanless platform aimed especially at car PCs. The IVP-7500 can be tucked away inside single- or double-DIN dashboards “as well as discrete, in-seat and headrest designs.” The board includes a built-in GPS chip that hooks up to an external I-PEX antenna that you can mount on the outside of your car.
The bane of small form factor PCs and netbooks so far has been the inability to play HD video without blowing a gasket. VIA hopes to change all that with the VX855, a media system processor (MSP) that “offers full hardware acceleration of the widest variety of leading video standards including H.264, MPEG-2/4, DivX and WMV9, allowing smooth playback of high bit-rate 1080p HD video.” The chipset sips 2.3 watts and is 27mm square.
Quick Version: Much more functional than a NAS hard drive but not as expensive or large as most home server boxes, the VIA ARTiGO A2000 threads the needle between performance and price. And it looks good, to boot.
Something I never really even considered about the various form factors of PCs I’ve set up in my time are that most of the inputs and outputs are clustered on one side. Of course, that’s because it makes a lot of sense, for a desktop situation where most of your stuff should be plugged in the back, but what about embedded/small form-factor systems where you don’t have space to be running cables around, or the density of I/O ports in one tiny area becomes hazardous? Why, you just shift a bunch of them to the other side, like VIA’s done.
No surprise here, but VIA’s issued a press release officially announcing that Samsung’s NC20, the 12-inch successor to the NC10 netbook, does indeed have a VIA Nano CPU – a fact that’s been known for quite some time now. Along with the news, we’ve got some official specs for the soon-to-be-released computer, although we still don’t have official pricing or launch dates.
That firecracker CEO of Nvidia, Jen-Hsun Huang, has revealed that Nvidia will be putting out an “Ion 2″ platform using VIA Nano processors instead of Intel’s Atoms. The pairing isn’t surprising, considering that the Nano processors are supposed to be quite as capable as Atoms, and Nvidia’s relationship with Intel right now isn’t exactly all fun and games.
We may see Lenovo netbooks packing NVIDIA and VIA chips pretty soon here. Digitimes is reporting that “Lenovo plans to launch 11.6-inch and 12.1-inch netbooks combining Intel’s Atom processor and Nvidia’s Ion platform in the second quarter of this year.”
I’m in the middle of reviewing VIA’s latest barebones system, the Artigo A2000. Essentially a tiny PC in a tiny box like other barebones setups, the Artigo sports the latest Nano-ITX mainboard and uses a sort of netbook-level processor, the VIA 1.5GHz C7-D. It’s a simple little device to set up, although getting the RAM in was a bit of a chore. Everything else works like a charm; I’ll have video in a day or two showing it boot up the latest Ubuntu and hopefully working as my own little media server.
Click on through for the video.
Word on the (Italian) street is that Samsung will be releasing the NC20 netbook sometime around February. It’ll be a netbook like the NC10 except it’ll have a nice, big 12.1-inch screen and it’ll swap out the Intel Atom processor for the new VIA nano CPU.
VIA has been building a few nice built-in PCs recently including the Iceman and this odd panel PC that is supposed to fit into a wall or a kiosk. The 10.4-inch touchscreen PC is rugged and fanless and includes a resistive touchscreen and plenty of ports. This is an embedded system so it’s aimed more at heavy duty applications but I could see this as a home control system in a wall somewhere.
It runs a 1.6GHz VIA Eden processor with 1GB of memory and has an internal drive bay, VGA connector, and even a serial port connector.
From BFF:
A few months ago I won (via CrunchGear) a nice piece of hardware that now replaces the veteran hdd divx player I bought from Hong Kong about the same time last year. The enclosure was much more reliable than the other “made in china” (sic) stuff I bought back then, but somehow its remote died this summer and it’s not that fun to pause/play/stop using the built-in buttons. It works, but one has to leave the couch in order to do it :-)
Say you needed a small PC with low power requirements to install inside a car or even inside a PCs drive bay. Well, friend, you should consider $300 VIA’s Artigo Pico-ITX. This tiny thing out-minis the Mac Mini and can run fast enough to put some of your older PCs to shame.
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You guys like computers, do ya? Me too. I spent a fair amount of time with the good people at VIA today and got some info about various upcoming products – some that have just been announced and some that haven’t yet.
For starters, here’s the VIA VB8001 CPU and motherboard combo that was recently announced. It uses VIA’s new “64-bit, superscalar, 1.6GHz VIA Nano processor” – basically VIA’s answer to Intel’s Atom. The barebones kit will be available in two weeks and is comprised of a Mini-ITX board with support for 4GB of RAM, two SATA ports, gigabit LAN, mini-PC slot for optional add-on cards (like Wi-Fi), and a PCI Express slot.
This is where it all began. Remember that. When the robot overlords are eating our children and grinding the rest of us into slurry, it will be all because of how robots are treated in the next century. This is nothing new; we all know it is coming. Humans build robots, robots take over, children get eaten. Hell, it’s even in the bible. Look it up.
At the recent Taipei International Robot Show in Taiwan, VIA showed up with some robots utilizing their EPIA Pico-ITX boards. The robots, which you can see in a video, here, range from DIY building kits to those meant for military applications.
So we got robots out there being made by who-knows-who, and then of course, there are the ones designed to be sent into battle or rescue ops. The Vecna Battlefield Extraction-Assist Robot (“affectionately known as BEAR”) is built to be sent into burning buildings to save their (current) human overlords.
It’s coming, man. I tells you. It’s finally coming. Man.
Are you a small PC fetishist? I sure am. That’s why we’re proud to give away two red hot ARTiGO Pico-ITX PCs with hard drives. What can you do with them? Well, they’re very small…
Have fun building your own portable PC. The VIA ARTiGO Pico-ITX Builder Kit is designed to help DIY enthusiasts utilize all the features of the ultra compact, versatile VIA Pico-ITX mainboard.
The VIA ARTiGO Pico-ITX Builder Kit A1000 includes a 1GHz VIA EPIA Pico-ITX mainboard, compact Pico-ITX form factor chassis, power adapter and accessories.
How do you win?
VIA has been so kind as to give us one red-hot Iceman PC. What is an Iceman?
Fanless and ventless, the VIA iceman excels in harsh environments where others fail. Engineered to be dust, rain and splash resistant, the iceman is suitable for both indoor and outdoor locations. Fulfilling all your media needs through integrated hardware MPEG-2 decoding acceleration, the iceman serves an almost endless range of deployment possibilities, from outdoor digital signage to industrial computing applications and much more.
Dude. You can put this PC in your mud wrestling pen. The ladies and/or men can surf the web while vying for a brand new Bob’s Golden Rodeo t-shirt. Can this get any better?
Looks like the motherboard business has lost its luster for VIA. Custom PC is reporting that VIA "sees no future in making chipsets for third parties such as Intel and AMD."
A VIA rep said that one of the main reasons the company moved into the processor business was because it saw the third-party chipset business becoming less important against providing a complete all-in-one platform.
This move is a little surprising as VIA has been a pretty big player in the motherboard market but we’re seeing more and more complete platform offerings nowadays, so the tides seem to be turning. There are still plenty of third-party motherboard manufacturers to pick up the slack, although it’s interesting to see some of those companies getting into building things like netbooks — companies like ASUS, Gigabyte, and MSI come to mind.
[via Slashdot]
We’re all hearing a lot about Intel’s Atom range of processors these days, likely because of the tiny laptop revolution (or whatever you want to call it). While VIA’s Nano is not competing directly with Atom as, say, GeForce does with Radeon, they are in the same ballpark and when it comes to low-power, general-purpose setups for things like tiny laptops or tablets, people are going to talk about Nano and Atom as competitors. HardOCP took a look at the two to see how they’d do in various situations.
With a bare bones setup (just a compatible mini motherboard and a gig of RAM) they compared the two in both synthetic and real-world applications. Intel’s been ruling the CPU roost these days so it came as a surprise to me when their touted Atom platform got its ass handed to it by pretty much every measure. Pure number crunching, desktop environment, video encoding, it got whupped pretty much all over town. These were essentially desktop setups and it’s difficult to extend the testing to the market, where demands on the systems are so varied. But it’s fun to know that Intel is getting schooled somewhere.
