Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #24963 in Consumer Electronics
• Brand: Acer
• Model: 92.G1DYZ.UF0
• Released on: 2009-07-06
• Dimensions: 6.57 pounds

Manufacturer's Description
The desktop PC is being redefined this year with the Acer AspireRevo, a compact, quiet, sleek 'anywhere' PC designed for the home. Optimised for the living room, office, or kitchen, AspireRevo delivers full HD video capabilities, mainstream 3D gaming and performance for typical desktop applications. All of this is made possible by the incredible graphics processing performance of NVIDIA ION coupled with a low-power Intel Atom processor.

Box Contains

Customer Reviews

Great product, great value
This is an excellent little piece of kit. It attaches neatly to the back of my monitor and is practically silent. The vertical stand it comes with is a bit dodgy though, very easy to knock the PC over.

I'm using it as a remote front-end for my MythTV PVR system, so I can watch TV in bed (I know, I know, get a life, or some sleep!) with the data streamed from downstairs over the wireless. It's perfect for this and general browsing and a few less demanding games.

The Linux that comes with the Revo is an instant-booting, unmodifiable, very basic system that just allows web browsing, skype and listening to music, and very little else. It's fine if that's all you want, but most people will need more than that. I disabled that and installed Ubuntu Netbook Remix, which installed flawlessly from a USB stick, boots and runs very snappily, and lets you install as much or as little software as you want. And it's all free, of course. They should really install it by default before shipping.

P.S. my version came with a 160GB hard disk rather than the 8GB SSD advertised. This was quite a nice surprise and it doesn't seem to make the system noisy or slow it down.

Exploding some myths...
I am knocked out by this little machine, but I keep seeing incorrect things written about it which irritates me so I thought I would explode a few myths.

I should mention that I bought the 1Gb version with Linux instead of Vista (£149.99) and fitted extra memory. It was supposed to come with an 8Gb SSD but instead arrived sporting the 160Gb Hard Disk (result!).

1. The case is not a sealed unit, it requires the removal of one screw which is hidden behind a sticker warning you that by opening it you are invalidating your warranty. I opened mine and installed an extra 1Gb of laptop memory (£7.99) in 2 minutes (2Gb is the maximum the chipset can handle according to the specifications).

2. With the correct Nvidia ION drivers it plays back HD video in 720p flawlessly - it has little to do with the power of the processor as this is handled by the Nvidia Ion acceleration. I can't comment on 1080p, but I have read press reviews saying that it copes fine and can play back Blu Ray without problems when connected to an external player.

3. I bought an extra one of these for my parents and installed XP (and extra memory). I had no problems finding XP drivers.

4. Mine currently has Windows 7 32 Bit on it, which feels faster and more polished than Vista - again, no driver problems. I've also tried Ubuntu - again fine but didn't leave it on long enough to mess around with much.

5. The included stand works fine if fitted properly (loosen the screw on the bottom of the stand before fitting it, make sure it clicks into place and then re-tighten the screw). The only exception to this is if you have lots of cables to attach which can overbalance things. This is caused by the lightness of the entire unit rather than the poor stand.

6. I would advocate starting with a fresh OS install if you have access to discs and an external dvd drive. Bundled software is invariably rubbish and I am always happier starting with a 'clean slate' of a machine.

7. Mine is currently doing duties as a Media Centre PC - it does this very well provided you don't want to play discs, although you could add an external DVD or Blu Ray player.

I am blown away by the quality and value of my system which cost less than a Nintendo Wii!

The future
Inexpensive, beautifully designed, quiet.
I can see Acer's point of view in not pre-installing Ubuntu and it's very simple - they don't have to.
As it is, they have made installing it as simple as possible by shipping the right kit:

Out of box, wire up, netboot Ubuntu USB stick in, press F12, select USB boot drive, type in network parameters, select desktop, sit back.
15-20 minutes later it's running Ubuntu.
You can go to nVidia and install the 3D accelerating drivers too, which consists of one download and one command.
Everything (wireless, audio, network, graphics) works straight out of the box.

This is, without any doubt the future of home computing.
Oh and mine came with a (apparently silent) 160Gb drive too.