Initial Thoughts

Many people were expecting VIA and NVIDIA to announce a merger, or for NVIDIA to announce their plans to develop an integrated GPU chipset for VIA's Nano processor.  Neither happened of course, but I think the latter is a lot closer than either company will divulge to us right now.  It would make sense - using a DX10-ready IGP solution would put Intel on the hot spot once again and the combined VIA/NVIDIA platform would be able to return to the single-board principle that it was really meant to be.  Maybe by this time next year VIA and NVIDIA will be ready to announce a much more encompassing business agreement...?

The gloves are officially off, and two out of three of Intel's competitors are holding hands once again to work on a competing platform for the Atom architecture.  VIA's mini-ITX 2.0 initiative has a lot of potential and I am eager to see what users of the technology, including creative enthusiasts and OEMs, develop with it.  I will be holding my judgment on the two products until after I get a hold of BOTH Intel's and VIA's options and compare them side by side.  Open platforms are an important part for the good of the community, but power and performance are just as important; until we get hands on with both we won't be taking either company at their word.