Toying with the idea of getting a mini PC instead of using the laptop for everyday work (mainly word processing/excell/ powerpoint).
I’d like to spend less than £250 and I don’t intend on gaming, but the PC will be hooked up to a TV (23″ Samsung) so any fringe benefits always welcome i.e ability to record TV straight onto hard drive. Only provision is that it must be unobtrusive and small.
Don’t really have a clue what I need, or more importantly what I don’t need so any advice welcome.
Cheers
Matt

There are a few atom based mini’s about for £230-£270, Do you want the lackluster performance of an Atom?

http://www.scan.co.uk/Shop/Computer-Hardware/All/Systems/NVIDIA-ION-and-Intel-Atom

Is the atom that bad? I’m currently using a Viao laptop thats about 5 years old (1.83Ghz Intel core 2) and it stuggles a little with larger word files but is ok for 98% of what it’s used for. I’ve seen the Zotac mini pc’s and they look as though they fit the bill – I take it they are the equivalent of a netbook but in desktop form?
I’d like to be able to run windows 7 though as the laptop uses Vista which I hate.
Cheers for the help.
Matt

Is the atom that bad?

I have a couple of Acer Aspire A3610 running Win7 just fine
They have an HDMI out straight into a TV too

I don’t do any graphics stuff or video rendering though

Ebuyer stock them

i have an asrock ion 330 with 4gb of ram that runs 7 just fine ( and ran it fine with only 2gb of ram ).
asrock also have variations that run the desktop core 2 duo processors too, iirc, with a similarly sized foot print.

Read the review here to see what’s possible with the new sandy bridge Core chips

http://www.cartft.com/catalog/il/1299

No graphics card needed 🙂

Here’s a couple of reviews:
Cape Ion
Asus EeePC