Nvidia EcoBook is a DIY Project, based on the Pegatron Cape 7 mini PC using Intel Atom CPU and Nvidia ION chipset with the goal to turn one of these multimedia systems into a book and put it along other books on the shelf. The result is a good-looking and “invisible” multimedia computer system for the living room that you can connect directly to your big HDTV and browse the net, watch HD videos both online and offline and even play games that are not too demanding. In the video you can see a comparison with a commercially available PC – the AOpen MiniPC, but that one uses integrated Intel graphics and a normal mobile Intel CPU instead of a low power and energy efficient Intel Atom processor. Note that the EcoBook PC seems to be using dual-core CPU, but actually that is because of the HyperThreading support resulting in two logical cores seen by the OS and the processor being physically a single core. The recommended Os to install and use with this PC is Windows 7, because of the available GPU acceleration built-in directly in the OS that can take advantage of the GPU performance that the integrated GPU in the Nvidia ION chipset has to offer. The 750GB WesternDigital Blue hard drive is not the typical height of 9.5 millimeters for a mobile HDD, but instead is 12.5 mm, but that is not an issue with this book design as there is enough space and having 750 gigabytes of space in such small size PC is great. The Pegatron Cape 7 has 1GB of integrated RAM, but it is good to add 1 GB more for achieving optimum performance not only for the system, but for the GPU too as the GeForce 9400M-like integrated graphics uses shared system memory for its needs.
Buying a product with an unknown Chinese brand can sometimes bring you an unwanted surprise and not to mention some additional headaches or even serious problems. A fresh example I had was with such product was an ExpressCard reader for Compact Flash cards that I picked up because of the very attractive price it had. Of course the product worked without any problems, or at least most of the time, there were just a few times that my laptop froze when inserting the reader. So I decided to open it up and see if there is any problem with it that might be causing the freezes and imagine my surprise when I’ve found the piece of solder on the picture above freely moving inside the case of the reader. I was quite happy that it did not do any serious damage to my laptop besides the few times it froze up the PC without any permanent damage. But if I was not lucky enough it could’ve shorted something important and could result in my laptop being seriously damaged, so next time when buying some item like that I’ll have this in mind…
If you are interested in the new 24-inch Full HD gaming display from Acer that is also 3D Vision compatible (120Hz panel) than you should check watch the unboxing video of the Acer Aspire GD245HQ above and then visit the full review at the 3D Vision Blog where it was put to some extensive testing. In brief the Acer GD245HQ is better designed, better built and performing better than the first generation 120Hz displays from ViewSonic and Samsung. It has an updated list of parameters, offers less ghosting, and although it brings some other new possible issues, in general it is more of a good improvement. If you wanted this to be the perfect and absolutely problem free monitor for stereoscopic 3D gaming, like a lot of people did, you might be a bit disappointed, but that is because we all probably had set too high expectations for it.
