Net top pcs

[Thomas-the-Terrano2]

saw these reviewed on gadget show yesterday.

basically cutdown home pc base unit, space
saver. liken to guts of a net book laptop ie atom
processor 160gb hdd, no optical drive.

cant see point at home other than can fasten to back
of tv/monitor but expansion potential.

could make a decent in car pc though, feature usbs
to connect either external optical drive or memory
stick to upload data.

one on review was about size of a wifi access point
ie like couple of fag packets so easily located in car...

 

[baskie]

I'm big into netbooks, love the little things, I've a eeepc 1000h and my kids have Dells. There is an eeepc decktop version called the Box or summit. But, a better option, if your looking to do something like put one in the car, is to get a eeepc 901 off Ebay with a bust screen, generally they go for about £100. Then it's easy to pull off the top half of the clamshell (the half that contains the screen) so all your left with is a thin base, with all the ports and keyboard (you'll need a keyboard in the car remember).

The base has a speaker out, VGA out and power in. So all you know need is an in car power supply (about a tenner), a VGA out to video plugs (to plug the thing into your incar screens) and the same for the speakers. Make these cables long, about 2m,carefully bind them all together to keep them tidy, plug them into the in car screens and hey presto, you've got an incar PC system with little more than a small keyboard that is wired connected to the screens. When not in use the keyboard just sits under the seats or in the pocket on the back of the front seats.

If you really want, add in a mobile broadband dongle and you've even got mobile internet in the car.

(Can you tell I've already given this some thing?)

 

[Thomas-the-Terrano2]

sorry expansion potential is next to zero.

2 of units featured were on xp, but one
had extra graphic processor and on vista

 

[baskie]

Right, yes, good point. Although they have 3 USB ports, plus you can fit 1.8" drives inplace of the SSD's if you want (mine ran a 60g one before I sold it on) and the ram is easily upgradable. But you can't get at the graphics cards or anything like that, they're all on the MoBo.

Out of the box they run XP fine, not sure on Vista (but why would you?). I hear 7 runs fine on them, but then I'm a Mac/Linux geek so wouldn't touch any such nasties ;-)