Shuttle are renowned for their small desktop PC’s. They aren’t known for being extremely cheap (or well made), but it is time for the tides to change with the official release of the KPC series of budget PC’s.
For a starting price of $US299, you get the K 4500 (there is supposed to be a Celeron version for $US199, but who cares about that?). Its insides include an Intel Core 2 Duo E2140, 1GB of RAM, 160GB HDD (limited time offer), Gigabit Ethernet, integrated graphics (Intel GMA 950) and “INTEGRATED 5.1 CHANNEL AUDIO W/DIGITAL PORTS”. With those specs, it will run the included Foresight Linux a treat (it’s a OS).
Yes, it is one of the new generation budget Linux machines, and you do seem to lose a lot of options in the process. The machine has no DVD drive or a space to put one. It only has 1 HDD bay. It only has 1 spare PCI slot, giving you no options for a better graphics option. To top it off, it isn’t really that small a PC, being around the same size as a fully featured Shuttle PC.
It won’t be a very good media PC. It will make an awful NAS box. It will make a pointless LAN gaming PC. On the other hand it will be a fantastic web surfing (or hosting) machine. Your mother will think its cute as she send her 3 emails a year (that all end with send to 10 other people for abundance). If they add a PCI-E slot, I will be on it faster then fat people at a free buffet.
For more info, click over to the lovely Engadget.
Some spokesman has come out of the closet and said there will be a 10-inch EEEPC and also a desktop version (you thought he was going to be gay didn’t you). The 10-inch will feature a 8GB flash drive and not much is known about the desktop.
Now its time for a rant. Currently the 8GB EEEPC is $US499, which means the 10-inch version will be more expensive. If it is $US599, which would be a good guess, it would put it in full featured notebook territory. The 7-incher has a 4 hour battery so the 10er can’t have much more and with Creative adding 32GB to the ZEN, I’m sure Asus could do something with the EeePC.
On the other hand, if the desktop EEEPC was to be cheap enough, it could fill a lot of lounge rooms as Media PC’s or a computer for the people who don’t use it more then a word document and some emails. Plus if it had a USB slot, it would be easy to add as much storage as you like.
Asus have gotten very lucky here, with getting in to a niche market that people absolutely love. They are selling them faster then they can make them, and they aren’t world changing or revolutionary in anyway. I will wait for a massive price drop (which probably won’t happen any time soon) before I would even consider one of these little fellows.
For more info, slide over to the Engadget Blog.