Thin, Light And Cool Desktop

Earlier, the Walnut, Calif.-based company rolled out its first line of small form-factor PCs, including the ultra-small PC Mini VOT 132. The CRN Test Center examined the 18.2-ounce unit, based on the Intel Atom platform, measuring 5.5 inches by 7.5 inches by 1 inch, and preloaded with Windows 7.

Some metrics: The device scored 1134 on Primate Labs' Geekbench 2.1 benchmarking utility -- making it fine for productivity applications and basic office messaging. It's got a built-in speaker that, to our pleasant surprise, provided nice, clear audio without a tinny sound that we've occasionally heard from other netbooks based on the Intel Atom.

It was built with six USB 2.0 ports, an Ethernet port, built-in wireless and HDMI support. Frankly, that's more than we've seen in the past year from some full-size desktop PCs. It comes with a separate, plug-in DVD drive and can either stand upright on a desktop or mount to the rear of an LCD.

And here's the part that we believe should appeal to VARs trying to coax enterprise customers to get a start on the PC refresh cycle: The VOT 132 never drew more than 19 watts of power during operation, including on bootup or during multitasking.

If the cost of running a PC now, which consumes 100 watts, totals $20 per year, replacing it with a VOT 132 could bring that down to $2 per year -- not to mention the compliance or business benefits of switching to more energy-efficient information technology.

We would also note that the VOT 132 never rose above room temperature, meaning that ViewSonic appears to have put as much care into the system's thermals as it has into its form factor. The unit's noise also never rose above the ambient level of the CRN Test Center lab (which is more than we can say for the self-built PCs we use for other, routine testing around here).

It's clear with this product that ViewSonic has taken much of its intellectual capital from designing space-conservative LCDs, dead-simple, out-of-the-box technology and applied it to PCs. With an anticipated enterprise PC refresh cycle at the beginning stages, ViewSonic has reinvented itself at just the right time to take advantage of both its expertise and changes in the market.

ViewSonic does come into this segment with the advantage of having a long-running, robust channel program and relationship with distributors, in addition to an understanding of channel needs. It also comes in with the disadvantage of competing against the likes of Lenovo, Raleigh, N.C., Hewlett-Packard, Mountain View, Calif., and Dell, Round Rock, Texas, all of which have very competitive offerings in the ultra-small desktop space.

Street pricing on the VOT 132 ranges from about $420 up to $480; while competing ultra-small desktops can be found for a smaller cost of acquisition, the design, metrics and positioning of the device as a "net top" make it more than reasonable for an enterprise.

We've seen ultra-thin PCs from companies including Hewlett-Packard, Lenovo, Dell and Acer America, San Jose, Calif. We believe that ViewSonic's PC Mini VOT 132 not only can go toe-to-toe with those rivals, but that it may actually be a better choice for VARs in certain scenarios. For an initial entry into this space, ViewSonic has done well.

We can recommend the PC Mini VOT 132 (although ViewSonic may want to rethink its naming conventions in this space), and believe VARs and solution providers can now look at the company as one more option for delivering desktop technology.

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