ZOTAC MAG Nettop

The system arrived late last week. I had a chance to set it up over the weekend and put together some impressions. First of all, here's the unboxing video - in HD!




My overall impressions of the system are overwhelmingly positive. Aside from a few minor issues, it has exceeded my expectations.

I purchased this little PC with the intention of using it for an HTPC (Home Theatre PC). Specifically I wanted to be able to play Hulu and Boxee, Pandora, and my CD collection from a network server. Most importantly, I wanted to be able to use it as a MythTV DVR frontend (viewer).check back for updates on how that is going I did not expect to be able to use it as the backend (recorder) - I expected that it would not be powerful enough. That's yet to be determined. I also expect that I will be using it for browsing the net when I need to do that jointly with my wife or company (hey, what does IMDB say about actor Blah, or what does Wikipedia think about this or the other.).


The features can't be beat.

Design:The unit is very compact and also very stylish. Shiny black case, nice shape. Rubber feet on the bottom to allow it to sit horizontally, an upright stand for standalone setup, and a monitor mount which has two screw patterns (screws included).

Pros:

1. Nice design. Very compact, stylish.
2. Dual-core Atom with hyperthreading. Allows two threads to run simultaneously on each core, for a total of four. The Task Manager shows it as four processors.
3. NVIDIA ION chip - a HUGE improvement over Intel's own graphics shipset. Adobe Flash 10.1 (currently in beta) is able to take advantage of the GPU, so the load on the processor is low and video runs very smoothly, in full HD, full screen.
4. HDMI output - carries both video and audio, one simple connector.
5. Multi-monitor support. It has both HDMI and VGA connectors, and so you can connect and use two monitors at the same time - if you're into that kind of thing and your OS supports it
6. FAST networking, not just any networking. GIGABIT ethernet and wireless at 802.11 N. So streaming HD video over my LAN from my NAS won't be an issue.
7. BONUS: HDCP support - I didn't see this in the specs, so this is a bonus. This means I can play HD content like BlueRay movies, if I attach a drive
8. ANOTHER BONUS: GPU-accelerated encoding/transcoding! I couldn't believe it! I fully expected to have to purchase an encoding card and stick it into a desktop, but this might work very well! - check back for updates on how that is going
9. No OS supplied. I am listing this as a positive, though this will depend on your point of view. I would rather not be charged for some overpriced OS that I don't need or use. I happened to have an old copy of Windows XP Pro, which I installed and it works very well. I also left room on the HD for an Ubuntu install later. Added bonus - no bloatware!
10. No keyboard, no mouse. Since I intend to use this as an HTPC, I need a remote keyboard/mouse - better not spend money on whatever the manufacturer might have decided to throw in, if I would not be able to use it anyway. Check back later for a sidebar on wireless keyboard
11. The case has a neat amber LED ring that glows when the PC is turned on. Not functional, but looks very neat.
12. It is literally whisper quiet. It isn't completely silent - there is an internal CPU fan, and the HD has moving parts also. However, the fan is super quiet - you literally almost don't realize it's there unless you get your face up against it. The power supply is an external power brick, so that's fanless - very nice.
13. Very low power draw. I'm going to check with a Kill-a-watt just how much under different tasks. Check back for updates on how that is going
14. Some nice trial software included on the driver CD. Video encoder, video editor, virus protector. GPU-accelerated! I'll be testing that out separately. check back for updates on how that is going
15. Little ZOTAC foil sticker. Call me crazy. I am liking this little guy. I might peel off the backing from the sticker and put it on the TV or something.

Now the cons:

1. Biggest so far is the reception on the wireless card. The antenna must be weak. It shows my N network as having a weak signal (2-3 bars) when my Dell laptop sitting next to it shows it as Excellent - 5 bars. I'll have to take the router out of the closet. Probably a good idea to do that anyway. UPDATE:Took router out of the closet. Reception went to two bars to three. Changed the orientation of the system - set it upright instead of flat. Reception went to four bars. Still pretty weak though. The system is now less than 20 feet from the router, no walls between them. Plugged in a D-LINK DWA-142Wireless USB Adapter Rangebooster N Draft 802.11N
   which immediately showed 100% signal strength, and a fast connection speed.
2. HDD and Power LEDs are a hwee bit too bright. I might have to tape over them. If I'm using this to watch video, I don't want to see the bright blue blinking HDD led.
3. Having a little trouble getting sound over HDMI to work. The driver under XP doesn't seem to have that option. That's the driver that came on the CD; I will try downloading updated drivers from the ZOTAC site.
4. Case is not meant to be opened. There are no screws holding the case together; it's a snap-on plastic, which means it's also pry-apart plastic. There's a sticker that says opening the case will void warranty. What if I want to upgrade the HDD? That's just weird.
5. The HDD is only 5400 rpm. I think you would get a noticeable performance boost on heavier tasks if it had a 7200 rpm drive.

Other notes:

1. I would have been willing to pay a little extra to have the case made of aluminium, which could act as a heatsink and in that way make the processor fan unnecessary and the PC almost completely silent (if I plug in an SSD).
2. Plasma TVs suffer from burn-in very quickly. That's sad. I might have to limit the use of the PC desktop on my TV.

Installation notes:

Installation involved a few hiccups but it succeeded. I went with the venerable Windows XP Pro OS, for which I had a license laying around. I did not feel inclined to purchase Windows 7 full license (although I have a free upgrade coming to me from a Vista system, so I might do this in the future). I also left 10GB unpartitioned on the HDD for an Ubuntu installation later.

The first thing to note is that you can't install an OS without having a proper full USB keyboard. I had only a USB wireless Lenovo keyboard/trackball combo, which I thought would work fine. (separate review, stand by for that). While the keyboard works fine, it lacks Function keys, so the point in the installation where you need to press F8 to accept EULA - that's where I got stuck and had to call neighbors to see if anyone has a USB keyboard I could borrow. Luckily someone did. Else it would have been a ride to MicroCenter for one of their $6 cheapo USB boards.

The next thing to note is that the drivers on the included CD aren't necessarily up to date, so you need to download the latest from the ZOTAC website (except graphics, more on that later). Once I installed all the drivers, the system worked very well (including sound over HDMI).

Graphics: the primary purpose for getting this system was to run it as an HTPC, and playing full screen Flash is a major part of that. Initial results were disappointing. The playback was pixelated and blocky and jarry, not at all smooth. Unwatchable. A quick look at the quality setting revealed 'medium' instead of 'high' while playing some NOVA program. That had to do with a weak wireless network connection, so once I fixed that the quality went to 'High'. The playback still was far from smooth however, and the CPU was running at 70%. Clearly the GPU-accelerated Flash wasn't so accelerated. I installed the latest player from Adobe (10.1 beta 3). The installation requires running an uninstall program on the previously installed Flash version - without that step the software wasn't updating. The new version of Flash didn't fare any better. While playing The Office off Hulu the playback was jarry. As a last step I downloaded and installed graphics drivers directly from NVIDIA. After reboot the display settings reset to 640x480 resolutions at 4 bit, which looked terrible, and would not reset to anything higher. Another reboot somehow fixed that problem, the resolution restored to normal.

With the latest Flash installed and the latest NVIDIA drivers (from January 2010) finally Hulu ran smoothly. Primary purpose of this system is achieved.


Remote controlling the box:

There's a Remote Desktop Connection (RDC) program for Android, and XP Pro has the RDC server. I will try this and post the results. If I can control Pandora remotely - this might be an excellent bonus standalone media player application for this little powerhouse

Bottom line:

this unit is very well suited for the tasks for which I purchased it. It's also unbelievable value. I can see using this for most anything a home computer can be asked to do - web browsing, media streaming and consuming, email, Quicken, Office programs, even video editing, believe it or not. I would even go so far as to say that this little PC would be perfectly appropriate as an office PC. However, keep in mind that it's still a low powered CPU, and the PC has limited expansion options. I would not use it for application development, where I need to run an application server, database server, programming environment and a front end. But then who knows, I may be proven wrong. I will try to load an Android IDE and see how that works.

If you would like to see what other people have said, here are product links to Amazon and NewEgg

Amazon gift card link.

Amazon	NewEgg
Zotac MAG MAG HD-ND01-U Mini PC

ASUS VH226

First post, just for practice, mostly.
Video unboxing in HD!





Pros: High resolution, low price, good brand. Lots of inputs. Bought two - one for work and one for my wife's computer - no problems with either, no dead pixels, brightness and colors are consistent between the units. My "blacks are black", but I have the higher-contrast version of this screen (VH222H). Many cables included. Excellent for daily business computing, occasional movie watching, and casual FPS gaming.

Cons: I could only afford two ;-)

Complex/annoying menu. The auto-seeking input selector will switch to another input when your display falls asleep, so your display may not fall asleep until all your devices fall asleep.. which won't happen at all with some devices (like DVD players, Satellite/TV set-top boxes, etc). This also means that you can't select another input without first waking the target device from sleep. Worse speakers ever. Must manually configure 4:3 when applicable. No HDMI cable included. Altogether, I take one egg for these problems.

Other Thoughts: Note, I own the nearly identical version of this monitor, the VH222H, which is no longer in stock here on NewEgg. The differences being that this, the VH226, has a lower contrast ratio but a faster refresh rate.

This display is a TN screen which means that colors will shift depending on the viewing angle. How much this bothers you will depend on how much color consistency matters to you and from how far you view the monitor. This is certainly not a good thing, but it isn't really a con for a monitor at this price. If this bothers you, consider a smaller TN monitor on which the problem would exist but would be less significant, or invest in a more expensive VA or IPS based display.

If you would like to see what other people have said, here are product links to Amazon and NewEgg

Amazon	NewEgg
	Product not currently available, but here's the link to the page