That box (photo) should be manufactured in huge quantities with the aim of putting one under every TV for $150. It's exactly what a media extender should be.

Leading the charge, or a few electrons short of a full subshell?

You decide.

Seems like a natural fit as well.

"No Atom Licence"

Where did you get that?
http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3499&p=3

Anyway, it's a perfect living room box. DVI, HDMI, full 1080p, eSATA, 7.1 sound. I want one.

sure it might be a good platform but nvidia does not have a licence for atom.

besides which intel have slated atoms are only sold with the ancient 945GM chipset.

must be a slow news day at the inq.

as has been mentioned, 945 is a desktop derived chipset, pulling more power than even the dual core atom. why intel didnt design a new low power chipset to go with their spiffing atom CPU is anyones guess: mine being cost. if nvidia can pair this with a perfectly capable GPU and chipset that will use just a little more power than 945, then you got yourself a genuinely capable bit of kit. HD video playback, better screen resolutions, and gaming. i play some very oldies on my netbook, 9400 would open up a whole new world of 'newer' oldies for me lol

Atom CPU is not really low power (compared to ARM).
Second, the 945 chipset is very power hungry but totally inefficient. the green one comparable to 945 in term of power usage, but can be much more efficient in idle or 2D modes.
On the other side, it is better to have less time to work comfortably then to have a lot of time to be not able to do your tasks.

How much power does the GPU draw?

One reason to use Atom is because it uses very little electricity. If the GPU in not low power, too, you end up negating the whole concept.

I bought my daughter an Acer Aspire One netbook (1GB RAM, 160 GB HDD) and don't find it 'frustratingly slow', as the author puts it. I've installed Office 2003 on it, as well as World of Warcraft, they all run just fine on it.

Throw in an atom 330 and a slot loading blu-ray, hey presto, green computing really takes off.