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IBM’s Big Iron mainframe has been around for years. Now Novatech is mounting
a challenge, in the shape of its small Ion.
The Portsmouth-based manufacturer has claimed its latest notebook is the
smallest and greenest PC on the market.
Keep an eye on the Ion, warned Kriss Pomroy, Novatech’s commercial director. It is the must-have eco- and wallet-friendly PC this Christmas. But he promised the Ion has the functionality of standard desktop PCs. “It will be tough for most of us this Christmas,” he said. “The Ion will offer some relief to people’s wallets.”
The machine is built on a 1.6GHz Intel Atom processor, 160GB hard drive, 1GB memory, 5.1 surround sound and DirectX 9 Intel graphics. Pomroy said the Ion would appeal to multimedia users, casual gamers, internet browsers and office workers.
Further reading
System builders need to work much harder to tempt reluctant buyers, he added.
Novatech has tried to address this by bundling lifetime technical support and
the Windows Live OneCare Internet security suite.
“As the PC finds new users and new applications, support is the issue that will
swing the deal for many system builders,” he said.
Armin Kumpf, senior director for business mobiles at Fujitsu Siemens Computers, said this is a wise move on the company’s part. The price-conscious casual user is one of the most important demographics.
He said FSC’s latest notebook, built after a collaboration with Nvidia, was designed to be “the perfect solution for the price-conscious, casual user, fully featured for mainstream graphics and productivity applications, and well priced”.
FSC used Nvidia’s GeForce 8200M graphics processing units (GPUs) in its Esprimo Mobile V systems, which was announced on 5 November. A graphics processor helps spread the processing workload away from the CPU and makes the PC more efficient, said Kumpf.
“It is all about power efficiency these days,” he added.
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