Today at 9:39am, Bryan Murdock said: >Hmm, a couple people mentioned these Shuttle systems. They look kinda >cool. Nice and small, and for some reason I'm getting the idea that >they might be quieter than the average system. Are they?
I've got one of them, and although I haven't tried FreeBSD or Linux on it yet, I've been extremely happy with it. It's about 1.5 inches wider than a standard CD-RW drive, as high as it is wide, and about 12" deep. Together with an LCD panel monitor, it is extremely portable, which has come in handy a few times. Although the main reason I bought it was a older (pre-PC era) desk, and a small office, that just didn't have enough space for a full size PC and monitor. The desktop is about 18"x40", and it has plenty of room for the computer, LCD monitor, keyboard/mouse and speakers. They also come with a lot of built-in bonuses, like firewire, 6-channel audio, SPDIF digital optical audio, TV-Out (composite and S-Video), etc. They don't have a modem or a parallel port, but they've got ethernet, so I'm happy. They've got a PCI slot and a PCI/AGP slot if you want to upgrade something. And contrary to what someone else said, even with my fat fingers, it wasn't terrible to work inside it, although you do have to take it most of the way apart to get to anything on the mobo, since the HDD, FDD, and CD-RW are right above the mobo, and the CPU/heatsink/fan assembly take up most of the back half of the case. For sound, I think they're extremely quiet. Barely noticeable. When I originally bought it, cost was also a selling point. The mobo with all of it's goodies, along with the case, heatsink/fan, etc. was about $300-350. A comperable mobo would have cost me $100-150 pretty easily, a nice case (but not as small, of course) would have been at least $50, and the heatsink/fan would probably be closest to the ones that cost ~$30-40. So it was maybe $100 more to get all the goodies and the small size, along with the extremely sleek looks. If you're into lan parties and such, they're awesome, and have padded carrying cases you can get, as well as some case-mods, like lighted front panels (indiglo-looking) and such. If I knew it would run FreeBSD really well, I couldn't ask for more, and my new computer would be one just like it too. I guess I'll have to try it soon. Mac -- Mac Newbold MNE - Mac Newbold Enterprises, LLC [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.macnewbold.com/ ____________________ BYU Unix Users Group http://uug.byu.edu/ ___________________________________________________________________ List Info: http://uug.byu.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/uug-list
