We got a Viper Pacer M-series to see how it stacks up in terms of performance, value, and price.
Design and Constructions
The Viper Pacer M series is a ‘nettop’ by virtue of the Intel Atom 230 CPU that sits inside its small hollow case. It has quite an attractive design with the front face of the chassis featuring bevels and beautiful rounded corners. The chassis is a small tower form factor micro ATX desktop. The front bay includes 2 USB ports and microphone and headphone jacks. The optical drive is a normal DVD drive that loads in a tray attached on its side. There are two chassis fans inside that keep it cool all the time.
Performance
As far as raw performance goes, users won’t see much of that. With the 1.6 gigahertz Intel Atom and 512 megabytes of RAM, this system isn’t going anywhere fast. Operating system tests showed that by far the best options are Windows XP and Ubuntu 8.10. While Windows 7 installed and ran fine, there were too many graphical artifacts and slowdowns. Watching movies was next to impossible, and file encoding and compression times were pretty disappointing, to say the least. The only problem with the fact that this system is not capable of running any OS newer than XP, is that an M-series user can expect a lifetime attached to it and all the problems associated with outdated OS.
Worth
When it comes down to it, for a cheap desktop PC, you’d be better off looking for a well-configured used or refurbished system. It would be powerful enough to meet your expectations and still be quite affordable.
If all you’re looking for is a low-priced, affordable system for browsing the web and doing a few other basic things, the Viper Pacer M-series is for you. Although, priced at about $150, it’s really not worth it.