Build Your Own Mini-PC For The Office

A Home-Grown Mini-PC: Tough Competition For Desktops & Notebooks

The article first appeared in Tom's Hard News email newsletter .

Time to junk those obsolete, elephant-like desktops! From the five-and-dime around the corner to Circuit City all the way to K-Mart, almost every merchant has been pushing the latest PC systems still cloaked in the passé fashions of the 90's. Meanwhile, it appears that a new trend is slowly captivating the PC market - ultra compact PC cases from Southeast Asia offer a taste of what the immediate future might have in store. Their message is clear, and by no means new - get rid of that boring, enormous, hospital gray box, and get yourself a chic, lightweight compact case. And by the way, a system built on one of these cases most certainly fulfills all the functions required by the average user.

It doesn't get any more compact than this! PC technology is reduced to a minimum: a board with graphics, sound, network capability, FireWire, and room for a 1100 MHz CPU and 1024 MB RAM.

Fully equipped board with all the components and cables.