About me:Social Anthropologist and consumer!
Has a functional approach to most things and count that first ...
Member since:07.05.2004
Reviews:16
Review rated by 5 Ciao members on average: very helpful
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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 an equivalent Shuttle. - It is actually smaller than most other SFF-systems. - It is SO QUIET! All I ever hear is the harddisk drive (which only whispers). - Is not picky on RAM - I run it with two different types of Corsair with no problems. - It is stable and performs well.
The downsides are: - It is hard to expand. Only room for one harddisk, only slim optical drives and (worst of all) only low-profile expansion cards. - It was born without safety fuse in the external amp (should be fixed in the later models). - No DVI on the onboard graphic chip.
In order to make use of my high quality TFT through DVI I had to find a low-profile PCI-Egraphic card including a low-profile bracket. I was shocked to realize that most LP-cards is not sold with LP-brackets! I ended up with a Winfast (LeadTek) Geforce 6200TC which does the job beautifully. As I have a 200 GB harddisk and a DVD+/-RW drive I don't think that I will need upgrading due to lack of haddisk space. Which leads to the main point: I usually don't pay any attention to the PC! It is quiet and does what I need it to, so I have no need to turn my attention to it... And when I do, it is to admire the design.
The bottom line: With a DVI-interface it would be perfect!
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28.05.2007 21:47
Hey, good review!:-)