Mini-Box Has A Crush On Tiny Embedded Powerhouse Gadgets

No. Its not particularly pretty. Its a grey box with an LCD display the same color as the original Nintendo Game Boy if it were backlit. Even the buttons look somewhat crude, but if you knew what lurked (or could, depending on the configuration you order) and at what prices, you’d stop caring about what it looks like.

With just an Intel Atom N330 1.6GHz CPU and the box the Mini-Box M300-LCD runs a mere US$260.65. Add 2GBs of RAM, a 160GB drive, upgrade to a Jetway mainboard and add a 3-port gigabit Ethernet module, and it only jumps to US$425.40. Wow. If you’d rather have wireless, you can drop the Ethernet module and get a MiniPCI adapter instead. Sadly, there’s no option to add a wireless MiniPCI board from Mini-Box’s site, but they are cheap and plentiful.

I’ve been using a nettop based on an Intel Atom N270 CPU, and it runs Windows XP very snappy indeed, so I doubt this box is a slouch. I’ll see if I can’t get one into the shop to run it through some tests. I particularly like the Ubuntu Server test. Yay! Oh, before I let you go, this box can take a 3.5” SATA drive or two (yes! I KNOW!) 2.5” SATA drives. There’s no indication if the BIOS is RAID-ready, but time will tell (or at least the PR person will).