AOpen box inspired by Mac Mini (News.com) [LWN.net]

AOpen box inspired by Mac Mini (News.com)

Posted Sep 30, 2005 18:50 UTC (Fri) by drag (subscriber, #31333)
Parent article: AOpen box inspired by Mac Mini (News.com)

Pretty damn nice.

I also like how they have a Linux version. It's going to give me warm fuzzies about Aopen now.

And Pentium D.. those are the dual core units right? That makes it extra special. Also those 945G setups with the integrated intel chipset are decent AND supported by OSS/DRI drivers. (don't quite think support is in current X.org stuff, but if anybody is using a 945g board please chime in!). They are worlds better then the old 'extreme graphics blaster' silliness and are about on par with the ATI 9200 featured in the Apple Mini. Intel claims that they are about as powerfull as a ATI 9800 although due to the shared memory over PCIe sceme I think that's too optimistic.

So it should make a good little linux box as long as they can keep the heat under control with those dual core Pentiums.. which is the only serious snag that I can think of. If it's noisy then it's a bust and I don't think those pentium d's are going to be easy to keep quite and cool. If they are able to do that then it would be a machine that would be quite a bit more powerfull then the Apple Mini. By a factor of 3-4 times. (I have a ibook with similar 1.2ghz G4, and while nice and cool, it's much slower then my modest 1.8ghz AMD Althon desktop, even with it's 1280 megs of RAM.)

If then have something in the way of a expansion card allowed then it would beat the mini hands down.. if they keep the noise under control. Heres hoping for huge heatsinks.

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