Review Of Asus Eee Top ET2002 Desktop

Asus combined with NVIDIA to bring us an All-in-one that would save the face for the All-in-one community. Promising speed and performance, Asus wanted us to change our views about the uselessness of these all-in-ones. Were they successful? Read on to find out.

Sum and Substance:

Thumbs Up:

This all-in-one is backed up by the NVIDIA GeForce 9400M, delivering in terms of video output. Another point is HDMI port located along the spine of the nettop. Wireless keyboard and mouse.

Thumbs Down:

The nettop delivered really bad performance. Online support was very tough to navigate, and took us too much time. Cheaper and more efficient desktops are in the market. The need for these expensive, low performance gadgets is mind baffling.

Inside The Trunk:

The Intel Atom 330 is a 1.66 GHz is mounted on a NVIDIA Ion chipset and fired up by the NVIDIA GeForce 9400M, the same graphics card that is mounted in the latest MacBook. The nettop has 2GHz of DDR3 RAM. The system has 320 GB hard drive. The Eee Top comes with wireless keyboard and mouse in the package, which is a nice inclusion. You have the benefit of the HDMI, which you can use to plug-in the camcorders and digital cameras. You can use your screen to view any data on the devices. The system also has a standard DVD burner. Good audio speakers are enough for a small room or your den.

The Whiz Kid Speaks:

The nettop generation is somewhat bothering me about the decline of demand for performance. People are reluctantly welcoming the all-in-ones. But that being said, these systems seriously need a lease of life and a good performance boost. That’s exactly what NVIDIA tried doing with the Eee Top ET2002. While it managed to cheat some performance out of the snail-pace Intel Atom 330, it has not managed to impress many. The Eee Top barely crawls through most of the applications and programs. In comparison to the Gateway SX 2800-01 is 5-6 times faster than the Eee top, in spite of being $50 cheaper. While the gateway embraces the Quad, the Eee Top sticks around the Atom. I feel that there is lot of work to be done on nettops before people are serious about buying them. The simple desktop in the same price range as the Eee Top performs much better. I would suggest you to hold back, and try watching the market for some time before you seriously decide to go in for a nettop.

Razzle Dazzle:

The small size is impressive, although along with the small size come serious performance issues. The system comes with a variety of ports, one of them being the HDMI port. You could use this to view videos directly from your camcorders. The All-in-one system lives up to its nomenclature but fails to excel in any one particular area. The system takes excruciatingly long time to execute some applications. The Eee comes bundled with a wireless keyboard and mouse. This is attractive, since none of the sub $900 nettops are offering the wireless set and the HDMI port. The Eee Top takes around 15 minutes to convert a CD worth batch of MP3s. That is slow by any calculation and if you can live with this kind of snail-pace processing, you could consider buying the Eee Top. The Eee Top is priced over the top, and low on performance. You could consider a slim tower like the Gateway with a standalone LCD, instead of being stuck with the nettops. The Gateway will hardly require any space for accommodation.

The gaming prowess of the Eee Top was strictly mundane. There was no edge even after using the NVIDIA chip. The games that we tested did not even display average graphics at default settings. We tried toning the settings down, but that did not help at all. There are no corners where the Eee Top feels competitive, and it needs a lot more work under the hood before showing up on the streets. There are no volume control buttons and is frustrating to be controlling it from the system settings. The Eee Top has a bunch of USB ports, a card reader and a headset and mic port duo apart from the Ethernet port. There are no FireWire, eSATA and digital audio outputs and all these factors are largely disappointing.

Inside Dope:

The system runs on a Windows Vista Premium Home edition, even after the Windows & has been introduced into the market. There are no major technological highlights in this system; rather it is a slow, outpaced system that needs a revival other than the inclusion of just the dedicated graphics card that NVIDIA provided. The 20 inch TFT screen would’ve been attractive had it had a touchscreen. The system has not played on its strengths as a small compact nettop, thus it is lagging behind the competition and hasn’t been able to create any waves in the market.

Nitty Gritty:

The Eee Top Et2002 is a donkey in a horse derby. It is seriously lagging behind by a mile. Asus may have to change the strategies if it has to ensure that its range of Eee Tops and eee Pc systems enjoy a certain rate of success. As of now, there is sadly nothing to recommend about this system, rather I would give a word of advice. Wait; watch till Asus irons out the creases before jumping on the bandwagon of Nettop users.

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