SFF design is getting interesting
Shuttle has been the de-facto SFF PC for some time now, it’s not difficult to see why. The cases are small, elegant and I believe most importantly – customisable to an extent (i.e. you can select from various standard components to build a machine).
However with the advent of the Mac Mini, Shuttles are starting to look rather large.
The market is full of ‘Media Centre PCs’, but most that have become available recently resemble cheap plastic hifi units, or Shuttles.
Two units have stood out from the crowd, the Kapsel Multimedia and the Hoojum Nanode.
Of course, as my luck would have it, neither seems to be available as yet. Let’s hope when they are released they don’t have a ‘Media Centre PC price tag’, which seems to add anywhere between £200 and £400 to the cost of a normal PC. The jewel in the crown would be a good flexibility on configuration/customisation. I know I’m asking a lot, but trust me the first to market with a unique product like these two and flexibility is going to rake it in.
The dimensions of these units are truely remarkable:-
- Average ATX PC – 540×198x458mm
- Shuttle – 325×220x210mm
- Kapsel – 270×230x100mm
- Mac Mini – 165×165x51mm
- Nanode – 95×150x150mm
Make me a Nanode with an Intel Core Duo CPU, a passively cooled graphics solution of nVidia FX5200 power or greater, 160GB+ HDD, WiFi/Bluetooth and plenty of USB2 connections and you’ll have a customer tomorrow.
