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Pentium M Goes SFF
Jonesy writes "The folks at The Tech Report have reviewed an interesting new small form factor box (a roughly toaster-sized desktop PC) from AOpen based on the Pentium M. As expected, performance is on par with a Pentium 4, but noise and power consumption are much lower. The reviewer says, 'Subjectively, the EY855-II was simply amazing. At one point, I sat with the system at ear level two feet away. I closed my eyes and strained to hear it, but was unable to do so.' The one fly in the ointment: relatively high prices still on Pentium M processors, although that could change soon."
Sure Macs had the first Small form factor Computer in the G4 Cube, but Shuttle and other PC Case makers have been making much more realistic(buyable) products for awhile now. The only reason Mac has the Mini is becuase of the inroads these other Case makers have been doing.
mnewberg.com
In every environment I've worked in, it has been easy to just position the PC in a way that I can't hear it, even if it is a bit noisy. I, for one, am not willing to pay *any* extra for a quiet desktop. The Mac mini isn't popular because it is quiet, it is popular because it is a practical fashion statement- something Apple is good at.
A government big enough to give you everything you want is big enough to take away everything you have.
if Pentium Ms are similar performance to Pentium 4s, wouldn't it be ideal for clusters and server farms in which (a) density, (b) heat, and (c) power dissipation becomes major factors in day-to-day operations?
Well .. the base Mini Mac is $499 and still needs memory, hard drive, etc also if you want to run OSX with any amount of performance.
.. and it does look like a toaster.
But your right, its nothing more then a "narrow" shuttle
-- Knowing too much can get you killed, but knowing who knows too much can make you rich.
Not sure thats a good thing really, do we really need PS2, serial, parallel and VGA ports on the back ?
Would have been neater to just go fully USB, Firewire and have DVI, ah well.
Look around, and only one company has truly done that... Apple with the Mac mini.
Many of the SFF PCs use m-itx, rather than laptop, motherboards and components. As such they use regular desktop CPUs, hard drives, heatsinks, and optical drives.
The Mac mini, however, uses a laptop hard drive, laptop optical drive, a laptop heatsink, and a laptop CPU.
GPL Deconstructed
Still isn't what people are looking for. Wintel folks: look to the Mac Mini for inspiration.
- People want good video performance. That means no shared memory for video. The only reason people buy these huge AOpen and Shuttle SFF's is that the Mini-ITX boards are saddled with lousy graphics. Put an ATi Mobility X700 with 128 megs of video memory in there, and customers won't want or need an AGP or PCIE16 slot. Now you can get away with no expansion slots at all.
The solution is staring the industry in the face, but no one seems to sell it: SFF machines built using laptop motherboards. If Dell can sell this for $1,000 why can't they sell the same thing with no display, battery, or keyboard for $500?Oh, and that's apart from the fact that parent poster is probably right. DOS compatibility isn't a selling point anymore, the huge, bulky white boxes are out, and the maintenance troubles of spyware-plaged W**s systems make many people look for alternatives. From what I know most people do with their PC's, the Mac Mini would make an excellent choice these days.
The most difficult road is the most interesting one.