I'd definitely stay away from Atom.
Each to his own of course, but you're not the man of unfounded one liners. Care to elaborate?
. If you speak of the older Atoms then yes, I can understand. The 525's are quite a bit better with HT, 64-bit and 4GB memory support.
If your opinion is based on
Anand's review, allow me to give my view on his cons:
• USB 3.0 devices may not be needed by the target users of this device, and do not operated at full speed
Maybe so, but the USB 3 is considerably faster than the USB 2. My 2GB USB 3.0 drives see a 50-60GB sustained speed. It's speed is up to par with my main machine, i7 on MSI P67A-GD80.
• No Bitstreaming support may be a deal-breaker for some users
I don't understand what he is talking about, I use bitstreaming exclusively and never had a problem (XBMC).
• The processing platform is "quick enough" for playback of media content, but can be slow at skipping, and navigation
Never had an issue with it. Maybe its the player he used to or a combination of things. Fast forward is smooth except at 8x, it goes smooth for a few secs then skips and goes smooth again; this is quite normal for the limited processing power it has. Normal skipping forward and back is not an issue. I use it every day as I skip the intro's of series (previously at...).
• Performance / Price can be greatly enhanced by opting for a slightly higher model such as the Core 100HT
Although I did buy the BD version, I regret doing so. I don't use the drive and the machine comes without a license to play bluray (which I didn't realize). The version without BD (and comes with a regular DVD drive) can be had for 300 euros.
Anand is being a cheaky git because the price difference he's quoting is comparing apples with oranges. He compares the ION price with bluray drive with the 100HT with DVD drive. The cheapest I could find with bluray is the Asrock CoreHT 233B which goes for 180 euros more than the ION 3D with BD. More than double than what Anand is quoting.
The Vision is exponentially more expensive, the cheapest goes for 700 euros (8 or 900 dollars?). The i5's are over a 1000 euro's, for that money I build a full blown workstation with an Ivy i7, SSD and 16GB memory.
I've had mine for quite some time now and I can find no fault with it. It handles ROHQ 1080p with DTS with CPU to spare, no problems whatsoever. Win7 is smooth and it handles all my series automatic downloads, repairs and unpacks without trouble. It's reasonably fast and working with MC17 feels no different than on my own machine. Oke when its really busy it can get a bit sluggish but that's mainly an issue with the 2,5" laptop harddisk being slow, an SSD would fix that. Typically background downloads do not interfere with video playback unless repair is required (I suspend that on a schedule to be done when I'm a sleep).
Last but not least, when i wake it from its slumber XMBC is sluggish for a few seconds. After that all is back to normal. I think that's quite normal too.
I can't judge wifi, I've never used it as I wire everything.
Seriously, I can find no fault with it. Did I say its silent too? It is
. If you have few hundred more, by all means build your own but limited to 4 or 500 dollars, I don't think there is a better deal. It beat my expectations in every respect.