AOpen BPL 6

Advantages: Very cheap, intelligent electronics keep wasted disks to a minimum
Disadvantages: None so far. How long can something this cheap last?

...-RW and 24 speed read machine, was, as I’ve said, a good machine at the time of purchase, but it’s replacement, an AOpen CRW5224, is only costing me a shade over £30 (yes thirty!) from www.dabs.com, AND it’s got a maximum write speed to CD-R of 52x, making full CD copies possible in just a few minutes, and I do mean a few. AOpen may well be more familiar to you as the makers of motherboards. Even if this machine only lasts the 12-month guarantee period and no longer, it’ll only cost me 66p a week to own (as for the DVD player, the most that can cost me is 50p a week thanks to the 2-year warranty). Every month beyond the first year is a bonus for the AOpen, and if it lasts as long as the Yamaha, it’ll cost me about 22p a week. Anyway, that’s got the skinflint bits out of the way. What’s it like to install and use? A BIT OF THE OLD ‘IN OUT... Read review

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Advantages: Extremely quite, beautiful machine
Disadvantages: CPU Cooling fan & the floppy drive connector are placed

...The latest craze in the computer world is miniture computer systems first introduced to us as the 'Shuttle' system. Since then many have taken a stab at this market and the EZ18 is AOpens answer to the call. The EZ18 comes in two colours to my knowledge (pearl white, and slick black)so its possible to accessorise according to your personal preference. I myself went for the slick black (or piano black as my friend calls it) with the glowing blue power button. I bought mine from Microdirect for about £148. Unlike some of its counterparts (the shuttle system, BioStar system) the EZ18 is more of a cube rather than a single story tower and it comes with the bare essentials (partly why they have been called 'barebone' systems). It comes with the motherboard which holds the sound card aswell as the on board graphics(i think its nVidia n... 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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