The netbook market may be completely saturated, but there's still room left in the nettop arena. Squeezing in just below entry-level systems, nettops offer desktop options that would be light on power consumption and easy on the wallet. Originally rumored earlier this year, it was speculated that Acer was getting ready to release a "high-end" nettop device called the Hornet, based on Nvidia's Ion platform.
Being sourced from a leak, much of the information was unconfirmed if not outright missing. While Acer still has not offered any officially statements regarding their plans for a nettop, the rumor has cropped up again, this time with a price tag and a release date. As it stands, Acer may be getting ready to push out a nettop sometime this month, with a price tag somewhere under $300.
It'll also be one of the first Ion-based machines, joining other planned devices such as netbooks, though most vendors were planning for launches in 2H09. Nvidia did state that the first Ion-based machines would start showing up in Spring.