FIC Condor Small Form Factor Reviewed

VL writes "A gamer's best friend? That's FIC's catch phrase, and we take them to task in our latest review. 'FIC put together a nice little barebone PC, but missed on some important features that enthusiasts have come to expect. While it's no slouch in gaming, it does not stand out in the performance department which is a shame as the design itself was well thought out.'"

Comments

Re:Nightmare

[The_Mystic_For_Real]

It's strange, listening to someone complain about the difficulties of dealing with the diversity among computers, when, throughout all of /., I hear about monopolies and everything being the same dull, grey box to to large corporations squeezing the littel guy with the innovative design out.

On another topic, I think that it is rather foolish to order a specialty PC and not be able to repair it yourself, or have the money to buy totally new parts. It's similar to owning an old car from a now defunct manufacturer. Cusomers shouldn't expect the same service as if they owned an uncustomized computer from a large manufacturer.

what's with the doors?

[poptones]

I have a mini system I put together from parts. It's a nice enough case (an off-brand minitower I got from computer geeks) but it - like just about every single mini system I've seen - has these damn doors over the ports on the front. The cdr door isn't too bad (except that it also means you have to remove the front of the drawer on the drive thus leaving the noiseproofing gasket out of the picture, which means going back four years to listening to jet engine takeoffs every time you use a DVD or CD) but the doors on the connectors mean your stuck with two choices:

1) never use the front panel jacks

2) use the front panel jacks and risk damage to the cheap plastic doors thus ensuring your nice looking system eventually looks like ass.

Of course, 1) isn't foolproof either, since it's incredibly easy to break on of these things off at the hinges just by laying it in the car seat wrong.

I can't stand those cubes with the jacks sticking out the front like some afterthought, either - but would it really be so hard to stick all those jacks in a nice even row at the bottom of the case behind a black rubber or felt gasket? Maybe use those black nylon fibers like at the end of vacuum cleaner dust attachments. It would look nice, be unbreakable, and only slightly more cumbersome to connect (Where's the hole? I know it's here somewhere...")

Anything other than flimsy plastic doors would be an improvement... especially at 650 fucking dollars! Yeesh!