Zatni Arbi, The Jakarta Post, Bangkok
You must have seen quite a few of them. They look more like a beauty cases, with drawers and chrome lining. The only difference is that they do not come with handles, so you have to tuck them under our arms when carrying them about.
They are not heavy, but they can be very powerful. You can fit them with the fastest processors and add the largest capacity hard disk you can find on the market. You can put in as much memory as it can hold, choose a Serial ATA hard disk and you will have a screamer.
Of course, they are not as portable as a notebook. I have seen people carrying one of them in a specially made bag, and they still have to carry a monitor and keyboard in another bag. On the other hand, they can be a great replacement for those space-hungry desktop computers.
Computers in small form factors (SFF) have been around for quite some time. The latest fad was perhaps the Mac Mini, which is not much larger than a stack of CD jewel boxes. PCs in small housings have actually been around for even longer.
In fact, my daughter has been using a Pentium II-based Prodigy from ASUS for a couple of years now. While the fan can get quite noisy when the machine is running hot, the CPU never shows any sign of diminished performance. My daughter often forgets to turn the small machine off before going to bed at night.
The Prodigy was a stunningly small bare-bones computer when it first appeared. Incidentally, a bare-bones computer comes without a processor and a hard disk. You have to add them yourself, giving you the freedom to choose.
Today, there are PCs smaller than the Prodigy bare-bones around. After the Mac Mini prompted a lot of people to switch to Apple, AOpen from Taiwan came out with an even smaller MiniPC. The race has not ended yet.
Making a tiny computer is not so difficult, especially now that a lot of peripherals are connected to the system via USB 2.0 while more and more components are embedded in the motherboard. However, there are some requirements that have to be taken into account.
First, the smaller the housing, the more difficult it is to keep the processor's temperature down at a healthy level. Today's processors generate so much heat that large fans resembling the shape of a jet engine have to be fitted on them to dissipate the heat. The problem is that fans can be noisy, and constant noise can affect you physically and mentally in the long run.
Second, like any other type of computer, the small computers should also use a high-quality power supply. I have been repeatedly shocked by how computer stores still throw in low-cost power supplies into the PCs that they are putting together for unknowing customers. A bad power supply can easily fry the motherboard and the processor.
Shuttle, one of the companies that make beauty-case PCs, has just announced that it is now officially entering the Indonesian market through its distribution partner, PT Diamondindo. According to Allen Lee, sales team leader from the Taiwan-based Shuttle, the decision was made after seeing that their products had a good market in the country and some importers had brought them here.
Shuttle plans to immediately start bringing in its X-PC line, which come in four models, including a Media Center. One of the design emphases is clearly on the availability of ports. The rear panel has more color-coded ports than you can possibly need, such as the PS2 keyboard and mouse ports, six-channel audio output ports, FireWire 400, USB 2.0, Ethernet LAN.
There is an SPDIF port for digital audio input/output on the SB87 G-5 model that was launched during the announcement. Hidden behind a hinged cover on the front panel are the microphone and headphone ports, two USB 2.0 ports and a FireWire port. If you want to use your thumb drive, you will not need a USB cable extension.
The chassis has also been designed to accommodate an 802.11b/g Wireless LAN module, which is available from Shuttle. With this module, you can share Internet access with other users within a 400-meter radius.
Lee also told me as we chatted just before the announcement that Shuttle had carefully selected the small power supply from its suppliers and fine-tuned it further to ensure stability of power output. The company calls its power supply SilentX to underscore its low-noise operation. The fans are as quiet as they can get, too.
One of the more interesting features of the Shuttle X-PC is the system that helps keep the processor cool. Dubbed I.C.E., short for Integrated Cooling Engine, it consists of a small fan that pushes the hot air from the processor's heatsink to a radiator that is attached to the back panel. Another quiet fan blows the transferred hot air through the fins to the outside. I.C.E. is actually based on a very simple method for heat dissipation, but if you open the casing and look at the pipes you might think that Shuttle uses watercooling in this system.
The question is now, when do you need a beauty-case CPU that costs the same as a high-end PC? Why not buy a notebook, which will give you a keyboard, a monitor and unparalleled portability?
There are times when a notebook is not an option. For example, when a friend of mine was demonstrating a video compression system to me, he could not use a notebook. He had to use a Shuttle, because he was using a full-sized PCI card.
If you are a gamer, you will definitely want to be able to upgrade your graphics card. They still come in a full-sized PCI card. There are some other add-ons that simply cannot be attached to the system with the USB. One reminder, though, the X-PC only supports PCI-Express, so if you want to use a full-sized card you will have to look at the other Shuttle lines of SFF PCs.
In any case, a stylish looking PC on your work desk with just one-third the height of a typical tower PC will certainly give you a good feeling.
