Shuttle X50 Nettop Finally Hits US Shores

The Shuttle X50, an all-in-one desktop with the low-power Intel Atom processor, is now available in the U.S. and Europe, the company announced Thursday. The X50 was first announced at CES in January.

It sports a dual-core Atom processor, 1GB of memory, a 160GB hard drive, Windows XP Home Edition, 5.1-channel audio, a Web cam and built-in microphone, 4-in-1 card reader, 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi, and a 15.6-inch touch-screen display. It's priced at $599. The touchscreen all-in-one Atom-powered desktop is a growing category of Nettops, which are generally defined as low-cost, low-power desktops. Before Shuttle's product was announced, Asus had already released the EeeTop, which has very similar specs. MSI's version is called the WindTop. Though these have only just begun to trickle out to consumers, PC industry observers see this as a viable subcategory of the tired desktop market. Because of the influx of these inexpensive touch-screen Nettops, the overall category of all-in-one desktops--which includes the much pricier Apple iMac and HP Touchsmart--is expected to grow more than 80 percent during 2009.