Dell Teases Inspiron Zino HD Mini PC

Author	Hugo Jobling
Published	13th Aug 2009

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If you're feeling in a particularly speculative mood, then take a gander at these photos of the Dell Inspiron Zino HD and feel free to guess to your hearts content what lies within its glossy exterior. Why the guesswork? Because aside from hinting it will use "desktop components" Dell is keeping silent about what will power the system.

Some inferences can be made without fear of looking silly, at least. The combination of the system's name and the presence of an HDMI port at its rear would suggest high definition content playback is high on the Zino HD's agenda. An optical drive of some sort is present, which could make Blu-ray playback a possibility - don't hold your breath though.

There is a card reader and two USB ports up front, with a further four at the rear, one of which looks to double up to provide eSATA. A VGA input is provided, though why anyone should want to use it is beyond me when HDMI is available.

On a purely aesthetic note, the Zino HD will have interchangeable covers, rather like the Studio Hybrid, somewhat cementing its place as a consumer-orientated device, as if that was necessary. Alas the folks at Gizmodo were unable to get any other info out of Dell.

Seeing as we're in supposition land at the moment, though, I should point out that I have it on good some authority that the drive bay will also accept bread, which will be turned into delicious toast. Just you wait and see.

Link:
Gizmodo.

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Ed said on 14th August 2009

@Bytes: Right you are on both fronts. However, the eSATA port is quite clearly labelled so I'm guessing this might be an early mockup that doesn't actually have the funct... more

Chris said on 14th August 2009

I reckon a serial port might end up being more likely than a VGA port in that hole. A lot of POS systems use serial interfaces, so maybe Dell want to target them as well.
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pimlicosound said on 14th August 2009

@Chris: Silent PC Review ran a C2D E7200 on the Zotac 9300 mini-ITX board in the Antec ISK 300, which uses a tiny 65W external PSU.

http://www.silentpcreview.com/art... more