Massive Small Form Factor Preview From Computex

Ultim8pc points to this "huge article covering almost every Small Form Factor offering that was on show at Computex. Includes, details of each manufacturers history in SFF." I especially like IWill's oscilloscope-looking Athlon 64 case.

Comments

In style

[neirboj]

As technology advances, fitting more and more into smaller and smaller spaces... Why do cars keep getting bigger and bigger?

Re:In style

[stratjakt]

Cars bigger and bigger?

After the hippie bum rush against detroit, compact and economy cars were all the rage. They got smaller and smaller. To drive a full sized sedan, after all, was to spit in mother natures face.

Now, people are realizing that the gas mileage between a compact and a full sized car is negligible (it's also negligible compared to an SUV), and all the tiny cars do for you is increase your chances of dying exponentially. The safest passenger vehicle on the road is a full sized car. So they're going back to normal.

Of course, theres the rebound of the Mini, and the hundreds of asian miniature cars, if you really want to face down a bus on the highway in a pop can.

In short, people dont want small cars. People want to seat four or more comfortably, and have enough trunk space for their luggage.

Re:In style

[Waffle Iron]

Now, people are realizing that the gas mileage between a compact and a full sized car is negligible (it's also negligible compared to an SUV)

The 2.5X difference in MPG between a large SUV and a compact car is negligible? If they were to propose raising your taxes by 150%, would you consider that to be negligible as well?

Re:In style

[ccp]

(it's also negligible compared to an SUV)

What part of this you didn't understand?

photography

[andih8u]

I kinda wish they'd zoomed out a bit so you could get a perspective of how big the computers are. Or at least had something next to them so you could judge their size.

Re:Didn't Apple do this first?

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's see... Apple's G4 Cube was released in July of 2000. It had a 2x AGP slot with a graphics card supporting VGA and DVI/ADC. It also had firewire, USB, a 56k modem, 10/100 ethernet, digital audio and internal slot for 802.11b. It also had speed competitive with the desktop Powermac G4s... and was almost completely silent with its convection cooling.

It took Shuttle roughly 18 months to release their first SFF using the form factor followed by most SFF machines today. It took 18 months AFTER the Cube was released for PC SFF computers to begin to approach the speed of desktop machines. Prior to the Shuttle box, most of what you may want to refer to as SFF PCs were simply underpowered, low performing and expensive machines with little expandability.

Trust me, the Cube was probably the first of what I would consider the modern SFF computer. If you know otherwise, prove it. It's easy to flame, but I want to see some proof of a machine that approached the features and performance of the cube at its time of release. AGP 2x slots, internal wireless, internal 56k modem, internal 10/100 ethernet, internal firewire, internal USB, digital audio, digital video, fan-less cooling. Hell, many SFF boxes still lack some of the features found in the cube.

As with a lot of Apple's failures, the cube failed not because of an inferior product, but because of timing. The technology used in the cube was simply too expensive to provide a viable product at the time it was released, but a lot was learned from it and it helped influence designs like the flat panel iMac AND modern SFF computers.