Dell Inspiron Zino HD: Eat It, Mac Mini

[jalyst]

Not really a proper comparative analysis against the Mini.
No surprises there, it is an AMD employee's blog after all.

http://blogs.amd.com/home/2009/11/12/the-dell-inspiron-zinohd/

But at least it gives you a fairly detailed insight into the hardware.

I too want to know how the actual GPU/CPU/Mem sub-systems compare.
I suspect the Mini takes the crown with the latter two, but not so sure about the GPU.

I for one am glad there's at least some competition...
Hopefully it'll make Apple "try that little bit harder" & not deliberately omit certain things.

[Aquafire]

AMD is often the better choice for those who want to run Linux natively.

So, this pregnant guppy might find a home in my collection..

I wonder how dismountable it will be.

Aqua
_________________
Of the four X systems in the world.

Which would you choose?

OS X : LinuX : UniX or MS-BolloX.

[jalyst]

Not really, it's CPU's are known to be a little more power efficient in certain instances, but I wouldn't say their mobo chipsets or GPU's are better supported.
In fact all the reading/experimentation I've done has pointed towards certain Intel chipsets & nV GPU's being better supported//more reliable...

I'm not saying it's not viable now, just wouldn't agree it's often the better choice.

There's been significant reforms to AMD's OSS dev models in the past 24mth which aim to change that, but momentum is still on the latter two's side.
Hopefully next year we'll start to see some broad-based competition from AMD in this area.

An excellent site for getting a solid picture of how all the major platforms are competing in the OSS arena:
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=home

[jalyst]

Zino HD + Boxee....
http://forum.boxee.tv/showthread.php?t=11274

[jalyst]

A few comments in here seem to suggest that the GPU is substantially faster and there's also an edge with the sound...

http://www.engadget.com/2009/11/12/dells-inspiron-zino-hd-on-sale-now-in-america-starts-at-229/

I don't care about the greater RAM/HDD space you get for your buck as one can always improve those sort of things with after-market add-ons etc.
I'm not really interested in cost benefit analysis either;

I just care about the best all round performer when one compares similarly specced core components of the two in Windows/Linux.

CPU
Mem subsystem
GPU
Audio
SATA bus

[jalyst]

crickey this thread is exploding
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1170527

[Aquafire]

[jalyst]

I can only speak from my own experiences using both AMD-based mobo's/GPU's, and Intel-based mobo's & nV GPU's.
Do AMD GPU's currently have a mature Video decoding & post processing API for the *nixes?

Anyway we're getting somewhat off topic thanks to me!

[Aquafire]

[jalyst]

Part of me wants to hammer the point but in the name of Aussie solidarity I won't be s 'shit stirrer'

[Zuma]

I think the Zino is a nice looking box with Blu-ray and all, but I don't know much about the Athlons or video cards they are using either. That being said, it might be worth a shot for $599.

[jalyst]

Some of those links I provided earlier are gradually providing a clearer picture of where it stands competitively.
At least with Windows as the platform; remains to be seen with OSS...

[Ben Tex]

I just bought a loaded Zino from Dell. They are starting at $199 for Black Friday. We're going to use this one with another TV. The Mac mini is still the main HTPC.

[jalyst]

Yeah I'm starting to settle more on ION-based platform....
I'd buy a beefed-up Zino in a heartbeat if there was better video processing support in Linux.
But for Windows users it's a nice choice...