Packard Bell Unveils Nvidia Ion Nettop

News
By Marcus Yam
published

They're back.

Remember Packard Bell? The company’s been out of mindshare for some time now, but it hopes to turn that all around.

The company today launched a new logo with a new tagline, “Puredesire.” It’s all a part of the new reinvigorating after being acquired from Acer. Along with it comes a new product line.

The Acer AspireRevo was the first nettop built off of the Nvidia Ion chipset and it seems that the Packard Bell iMax mini will be the second.

Sadly, the Packard Bell iMax mini is little more than a rebadged AspireRevo, which means the modest Atom N230 along with 2 GB RAM, 250 GB HDD, six USB ports, HDMI and VGA out.

Right now the Nvidia Ion crew is still quite sparse with only the two aforementioned nettops and Lenovo’s just announced S12 netbook being the only backers. Hopefully we’ll see a lot more Nvidia Ion products next week at Computex.

Marcus Yam
Marcus Yam
Marcus Yam served as Tom's Hardware News Director during 2008-2014. He entered tech media in the late 90s and fondly remembers the days when an overclocked Celeron 300A and Voodoo2 SLI comprised a gaming rig with the ultimate street cred.
20 Comments Comment from the forums
  • puddleglum
    Why bring back a name that only had negative conotations?
    Reply
  • grieve
    wow Packard Bell...
    I havnt heard or thought of them in years! 5 or 10 years even. I didn't even know Acer bought them.
    Reply
  • gwolfman
    My first personally owned computer (my dad bought for me when I was ~12 or so) was a Pentium 66MHz from PB. Wow, I thought they totally disappeared.
    Reply
  • mavroxur
    Wow, Packard Bell....haven't seen that name in a long time. Maybe AST will start making machines again too.
    Reply
  • Packard Bell! Nothing but negative feelings for that name. Bad choice for a name. Too many peole I know that hate the old company. It would have been better to call it Madoff Ponzi!
    Reply
  • captaincharisma
    i though they were gone long ago. i'm surprised HP never tried to buy them just to end the confusion between the 2 companies
    Reply
  • grieve
    ancientnoobguess what you all dont no what ur talking about with the company of HP there is a lot of company inside with the surprise that goes with a feling machine then using a pentium 66.Sober up, then comment.
    Reply
  • captaincharisma
    guess what you all dont no what ur talking about with the company of HP there is a lot of company inside with the surprise that goes with a feling machine then using a pentium 66.

    i guess that why they call him ancientnoob. hes so ancient he can't speak no more LOL
    Reply
  • 1971Rhino
    I take it I'm not the only one who saw the words "Packard Bell" and cringed before even reading what it was about.
    Reply
  • jn77
    Are they still around, I thought the poorly built lumps of goo hey built were a thing of the past...
    Reply