Ion-based Linux nettop soars in review

"Starting at $400, the 10.4 x 9.0 x 4.4-inch Ion Breeze 3770 is equipped with Zotac's "Ionitx" Mini-ITX motherboard (pictured at right), which we covered last month. The board provides an Atom 230 CPU, but matches it with the new Nvidia Ion GeForce 9400M GPU instead of the Intel chipset that's typically employed. (See farther below for background on the Ion platform.)

"The Ion Breeze 3770 system backs up its 1.6GHz Atom 230 CPU and Nvidia Ion northbridge/southbridge with 1GB of DDR2 800MHz, with an option to upgrade to 2GB or 3GB. A 250GB hard disk drive (HDD) is standard, with options to move up to as much as 1GB, and even more storage is available via the eSATA port and eight USB 2.0 ports.

"The nettop also provides VGA, DVI, and HDMI video ports, a gigabit Ethernet port, and audio and PS/2 connections, says ZaReason. A variety of Ubuntu 9.04 Linux distros, detailed in the table below, are available pre-installed."

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