2009 Taipei IT Month Day1 Acer Aspire Revo

A nettop (or miniature PC, Mini PC or Smart Micro PC) is a small-sized, inexpensive, low-power, legacy-free desktop computer designed for basic tasks such as

web browsing Web navigation refers to the process of navigating a network of information resources in the World Wide Web, which is organized as hypertext or hypermedia. The user interface that is used to do so is called a web browser. A central theme in we ...

, accessing web-based applications, document processing, and audio/video playback. The word ''nettop'' is a

portmanteau A portmanteau word, or portmanteau (, ) is a blend of wordsnetwork'' and '' desktop''. It is the desktop counterpart of the

netbook Netbook was a commonly used term that identified a product class of small and inexpensive laptops which were sold from 2007 to around 2013. These machines were designed primarily as cost-effective tools for consumers to access the Inte ...

. Modern ( 2020) mini PCs or small form factor PCs can be much more powerful, being equipped with high-end laptop components or mid-range desktop components. Compared with ordinary desktop computers, nettops are not only smaller and less expensive, but they also consume much less power. For example, CompuLab's fit-PC2 consumes no more than 8 watts of power whereas a typical desktop would easily consume more than 100 watts of power; consequently, nettops require significantly less cooling and may even be completely fanless. Some do not have an optical disk drive and use a

solid state drive A solid-state drive (SSD) is a solid-state storage device that uses integrated circuit assemblies to store data Persistence (computer science), persistently, typically using flash memory, and functioning as secondary storage in the Computer ...

, making them completely silent. The tradeoff is that the hardware specifications and processing power are usually reduced and hence make nettops less appropriate for running complex or resource-intensive

application Application may refer to: Mathematics and computing * Application software, computer software designed to help the user to perform specific tasks ** Application layer, an abstraction layer that specifies protocols and interface methods used in a c ...

History

Nettops and mini PCs have what could be considered an unusual history. The "first wave" of such devices, which occurred in the mid to late 2000s, were commonly referred to as "nettops". These included devices such as the Acer AspireRevo seen above, and were commonly considered to be a kind of "temporary substitute" PC of a lower cost for users needing a second PC or for use in developing countries. Another commonly held view at the time was their use as a stepping stone towards a thin-client–based always online computer that would "replace inefficient PCs".

Development of netbooks and the cannibalisation of laptop sales

As demand for these devices quickly waned, the industry responded by addressing the chief complaint that these devices would be better as portable devices such as a new form of laptop. The result was the

, a device which was considered the true future of the nettop. However, prevailing attitudes and economic issues in 2008 onward made these popular due to their low cost and portability along with the then-expanding feature-set. In August 2009, reports from reviewers were that a netbook of the time and a traditional laptop of the same price were otherwise identical. The implications that the price of standard notebooks should be dropped was a financial liability, due to huge unsold inventories of standard laptops in retail chains and an unfavorable market in which to unload them meant that cannibalisation of laptop sales by netbooks would be financially undesirable for the industry. A clearance sale was also not an option under these conditions, especially among multiple retail chains and online shopping sites. These factors, along with a desire to keep netbook sales going to recoup R&D, design and manufacturing costs, were all likely contributing factors of an industry-wide effort to sabotage

s through purposefully limited devices that could be sold cheaply while acting as a form of

social engineering Social engineering may refer to: * Social engineering (political science), a means of influencing particular attitudes and social behaviors on a large scale * Social engineering (security), obtaining confidential information by manipulating and/or ...

towards discrediting netbook devices. The direct lineage between nettops and netbooks meant that the concept of a "net-" prefix was considered a failed idea. Devices such as Chromebooks, tablet PCs, Ultrabooks and other devices responded by branding themselves as a different type of device such as

ChromeOS ChromeOS, sometimes stylized as chromeOS and formerly styled as Chrome OS, is a Linux-based operating system designed by Google. It is derived from the open-source ChromiumOS and uses the Google Chrome web browser as its principal user interfac ...

being exclusively a pure web client or the proposal that the

ultrabook Ultrabook is a marketing term, originated and trademarked by Intel, for a category of high-end laptop computers. They were originally marketed as featuring ultra thin form factor and light weight design without compromising battery life or per ...

succeeded by compensating for its lighter weight and otherwise equal-performance parts with a higher price tag. In 2015, a revival of the concept came about from a likely unrelated source, a technological form of

convergent evolution Convergent evolution is the independent evolution of similar features in species of different periods or epochs in time. Convergent evolution creates analogous structures that have similar form or function but were not present in the last com ...

. Via the likely-observed success of the

stick PC A stick PC or PC on a stick is a single-board computer in a small elongated casing resembling a stick, that can usually be plugged directly (without an HDMI cable) into an HDMI video port. A stick PC is a device which has independent CPUs or proce ...

, the idea of combining a

system on a chip A system on a chip or system-on-chip (SoC ; pl. ''SoCs'' ) is an integrated circuit that integrates most or all components of a computer or other electronic system. These components almost always include a central processing unit (CPU), memor ...

with a

single-board computer A single-board computer (SBC) is a complete computer built on a single circuit board, with microprocessor(s), memory, input/output (I/O) and other features required of a functional computer. Single-board computers are commonly made as demonstrat ...

has led to a continuation of the nettop's original product goals. Mini PCs such as the MINIX Z83-4 or the Azulle Access Plus are exclusively referred to as "mini PCs", despite being identical or near-identical on paper to the nettop architecture.

Hardware

There are three platforms that are primarily intended for nettops and netbooks: * Intel's Centrino Atom platform * Nvidia's Ion platform * VIA's Trinity Platform Some nettops have also adopted

system-on-a-chip A system on a chip or system-on-chip (SoC ; pl. ''SoCs'' ) is an integrated circuit that integrates most or all components of a computer or other electronic system. These components almost always include a central processing unit (CPU), memor ...

designs. Although many major parts such as chipsets, video cards and storage devices can also be found on desktops, the CPUs that are put inside nettops are the fundamental component that differentiate them from normal desktops. The list below contains a range of hardware components that a typical nettop may be assembled from. * CPU *:

Intel Atom Intel Atom is the brand name for a line of IA-32 and x86-64 instruction set ultra-low-voltage processors by Intel Corporation designed to reduce electric consumption and power dissipation in comparison with ordinary processors of the Intel ...

, Core i3 ( x86) *:

VIA Nano The VIA Nano (formerly code-named VIA Isaiah) is a 64-bit CPU for personal computers. The VIA Nano was released by VIA Technologies in 2008 after five years of development by its CPU division, Centaur Technology. This new Isaiah 64-bit architec ...

and VIA C7 processors (x86) *: AMD Fusion (x86) *: AMD Geode (x86) *: ARM Cortex-based CPU ( ARM) *:

Loongson Loongson () is the name of a family of general-purpose, MIPS architecture-compatible microprocessors, as well as the name of the Chinese fabless company (Loongson Technology) that develops them. The processors are alternately called Godson proc ...

( MIPS) * GPU *: Intel GMA 950 *: S3 Graphics Chrome *: GeForce 9400M G (integrated into MCP79MX; Nvidia ION platform) *: AMD Radeon HD 6310 *: ATI HD4530 *:

PowerVR PowerVR is a division of Imagination Technologies (formerly VideoLogic) that develops hardware and software for 2D and 3D rendering, and for video encoding, decoding, associated image processing and DirectX, OpenGL ES, OpenVG, and OpenCL accele ...

* Chipset *: 945GSE and 945GC Express chipsets *: MCP79MX (integrated GeForce 9400M G GPU; Nvidia ION platform) *: VIA VX800 IGP Chipset * RAM *: typically 512 MB to 2 GB SDRAM, DDR or DDR2 memory * Storage devices *: at least 1 GB flash memory *: 2.5"

hard disk drive A hard disk drive (HDD), hard disk, hard drive, or fixed disk is an electro-mechanical data storage device that stores and retrieves digital data using magnetic storage with one or more rigid rapidly rotating platters coated with magn ...

or solid-state drive (SSD) * Network *:

Ethernet Ethernet () is a family of wired computer networking technologies commonly used in local area networks (LAN), metropolitan area networks (MAN) and wide area networks (WAN). It was commercially introduced in 1980 and first standardized in ...

and/or

Wi-Fi Wi-Fi () is a family of wireless network protocols, based on the IEEE 802.11 family of standards, which are commonly used for local area networking of devices and Internet access, allowing nearby digital devices to exchange data by radio w ...

* I/O ports *: LAN, USB 2.0, video out, audio out Intel's Atom processor has been adopted by several hardware manufacturers, such as ASUS, MSI, and Sony, for nettops. Nvidia has also released its first generation ION platform, which puts GeForce 9400M Motherboard GPU alongside the Atom processor to provide better high definition video playback ability and lower power consumption. In addition, Nvidia has announced that it will support VIA's CPUs this year. To further reduce the manufacturing cost and improve power efficiency, many manufacturers and start-up companies have chosen to use CPUs that were originally targeted at embedded computing devices such as AMD's Geode and ARM Cortex-based CPUs.

Operating systems

Many net-top models are x86-processor-based and as such are capable of running standard PC OSes. There are also operating systems designed specifically for nettops and other machines in the same performance class. Some high-end nettops are capable of running

Windows 10 Windows 10 is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. It is the direct successor to Windows 8.1, which was released nearly two years earlier. It was released to manufacturing on July 15, 2015, and later to retail on ...

. Google's

and

Android Android may refer to: Science and technology * Android (robot), a humanoid robot or synthetic organism designed to imitate a human * Android (operating system), Google's mobile operating system ** Bugdroid, a Google mascot sometimes referred to ...

are other options. Although Google's Android was originally designed for

smartphone A smartphone is a portable computer device that combines mobile telephone and computing functions into one unit. They are distinguished from feature phones by their stronger hardware capabilities and extensive mobile operating systems, whic ...

s, it has also taken a seat in the nettop market. Another Linux distribution suitable for nettops is Ubuntu.

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, which i ...

is beginning to be the favorite choice of nettop users (considering the high commercial use of these machines), the flexibility and low-requirement capabilities of the OS are perfect for the product.

Market

Nettops fell into Intel's category of "Basic PC", which usually cost from $100 to $299.CNet article
/ref> Intel described nettops as a large potential market at that time. Nettops were said to be able serve as an affordable first computer for people in developing countries, or as an environmentally friendly choice as a secondary computer for people in developed countries.Netbooks and Nettops New category of emerging Internet Devices
/ref> As a result of successes with Stick PCs and Linux Mint-based Nettop-like computers, as well as continued success of the Mac Mini, the idea was possibly unintentionally revived as Mini PCs, which continue to be sold through online retailers as of August 2017.

References

External links

*
Approximate computer power usages list by Univ. of Pennsylvania
* Russian portal o
nettops
{{Computer sizes Personal computers Appropriate technology Cloud clients de:Netbook#Nettop