AOpen 1551-AG1 - no CPU - 12.1" TFT

Advantages: Tailor Made Spec, Robust Quality build. Nice looking, Good Value, Easy to upgrade
Disadvantages: Needs a high level of technical competance. One or two parts can be difficult to obtain.

...I purchased this notebook because, as a die-hard MAC user, I was getting slightly frustrated constantly having to battle with windows software at work which runs very badly on my windows emulator. So I wanted something which would cost next to nothing but that was still going to be capable of running some demanding business applications In this machine I found all this... and then some! Actually it is a very well constructed piece of equipment, and, as someone who hates windoze! I have been pleasantly suprised at how well it works. What you get is a motherboard, heatsink, a case and screen. What you have to add is a Hard disk, a keyboard kit for your country, a CD or DVD drive a CPU and some memory. Mine is 1.4Ghz Centrino / 256mb RAM / 40GB HDD / Panasonic UJ815 DVD writer. To which add Windows 2000 Pro. The main problem you... Read review

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Advantages: Very silent, very stylish and very good at performing
Disadvantages: Not too many expansion possibilities, no DVI.

...Great little thing, this machine. I have always been a great fan of Shuttle computers - mainly for the thought that lays behind the systems and the designs. However two things have always been annoying about Shuttle: The price and the noise. AOpen has been pioneers when it comes to Pentium-M and this fact made me confident in buying a small form factor (SFF) system based on the Pentium-M. The system is brilliant and I use it for all my computing-tasks which are surfing on the Net, text- and powerpoint-handling as well as games every now and then and some audio recording and editing. My system is equipped with a 1.6 GHz Pentium-M (bought cheap from eBay), 1GB of Corsair RAM (two different types!), 533 MHz fsb. The system runs with Windows XP Home SP2 - and does so brilliantly. The good things about this machine: - Costs way less than... Read review

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Advantages: Cheap and lots of features
Disadvantages: average overclocking ability

...The AOpen AK77-600 Max has a unique feature of having double bios chips, specially these days when virus attacks are common these days. With having twin bios, the second bios can store a good bios version that can be used when the first bios other one fails. It is also bundled with a Norton virus 2003, s very helpful software which can protect you from e-mail worms and viruses. This board has via kt600 chipset instead of an nforce 2. The motherboard has a little heat sink at the middle which helps to avoid overheating. All the headers of this motherboard are place on the near bottom of the motherboard. The USB 2.0 header s located at the second third PCI slots. A total of 6 USB ports are located at the back panel of this board. There is also a printer port and 2 ps/2 ports. Four mounting holes are located in CPU sockets, which free... Read review

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