Abaco Dual-Core Atom 330-Based Nettop Announced

Intel’s highly expected 1.6GHz dual-core Atom 330 processor started to make its appearance on the Web. The Milan-based Abaco Computers has announced a dual-core Atom-based nettop, named simply Dual Desktop, and the company takes pre-orders for the machine with an announced shipping date of September 19th, 2008. The Abaco Dual Desktop packs inside 1GB of DDR2 memory, a 250GB 7,200rpm hard-disk drive, a DVD writer as optical drive, onboard Intel GMA 950 graphics, and comes with Ubuntu Linux as its operating system. The Atom 330 processor is said to offer 533MHz FSB and 1MB of L2 cache.

The new nettop measures only 20cm x 10cm x 27cm (around 7.9 x 3.95 x 10.63 inches), so it really is a tiny machine. Even so, it still features an Ethernet port, six USB ports (two in the front, four on the rear), parallel and serial ports, and VGA out. Due to the fact that it is so small, the Dual Desktop makes use of an external 80W power pack which measures 3cm x 6cm x 12cm (around 1.2 x 2.4 x 4.7 inches).

Other Atom 330-based systems announced to come this month are the T7 Home Server and a special-edition Media Centre system from the Manchester-based Tranquil PC. The company said that its systems would be available on limited quantities only. Even so, the fact that two retailers have already announced such machines is clear evidence that Intel's processor is ready to make its entrance on the retail market. We should expect to see many other nettops announced in the following weeks, just like the release of Atom brought to the spotlight a wide range of netbooks a few months ago.

The price tag for Abaco's Dual Desktop has been set at €349 (around $497), yet it should depend on configuration options. The company offers a two-year warranty for the nettop, as well as Desktop, Thin Client and Solid State flavors. It remains to be seen whether Intel's dual-core Atom 330 processor will be able to handle full-HD video. If it does, we'll have a lot of small, lightweight, sufficient and low-cost systems coming to the market during the next few weeks.