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My next acquisition in that area will probably be a year or two off - and it will be the baddest-assed laptop you ever saw

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Let me introduce you...

Sorry, did I say I had only 1 shuttle? http://space-simulator.lanl.gov/

To make the Shuttle even quieter (it's not that quiet actually) you can replace both the main and power supply fans. If you're at all interested in Small Form Factor PC's, you must check out the forums at http://www.sudhian.com

I've got two HDs in my case right now. a 60 and 20GB. The 20GB will likely get replaced with an 80 or larger at some point. This is going to be a movie machine and PVR. I suppose with a 9700 in it I should also play some games or something...

I should start another thread. I need to know some good titles that will play well with any of the following: gamepad (analog or digital), digital joystick (old-style WICO/arcade), wireless keyboard with IBM-style pointer thing.

BTW, the mod I'm doing right now s to stealth the optical drive (look sit up on the sudhian SS51G FAQ page).

Bruno

Oh yeah, Area 51... I know about that one. I guess what I'm implying is that for me to be able to afford it! is about a year or two off. At that point my main machine will likely become a server, I'll sell the current one to a friend for cheap, and then I'll get the ultimate laptop as my new main unit.

Wow, I knew about that one, but forgot how cool it was *drools*.

Yes.. but i put it together myself from parts from http://www.newegg.com

I think places like http://www.tigerdirect.com have it already assembled kits. You may have to do a little foot work on that. It's still new, but I know shuttle signed a deal with either dell or compaq to bring them to market next year.

If you know how to put together a PC or can find one assembled already, you will beat the crowd. Do a search on google for shuttle XPC and i think a few will come up that are already assembled.

Mine is extremely quiet, pretty much stock. THe modern hard drive I think helped a lot. It's right here on my desk and sometimes I don't hear anything. Especially since the fan regulates its own speed.

$327 Case/motherboard
$329 for 512MB ddr 333mhz xms cosair Ram & 2.4 Ghz Pent 4
thats just under $700 for almost topof the line stuff.

It's more fun building them then buying them already put together. I'll run the idea by her this weekend. I would still have to add a hard drive, dvd player or cd-rom, monitor and printer to the $700 but that would put it around $1300 so maybe that would be ok. Wish I could afford to build a new one for myself.

Sure is lots of fun building, I have the mini-itx bug, running 3 around the house already ( sigma Xcard is handy for the TV based PC ), with an M9000 waiting for a case.

I like how that mobo is so small they had to make the lithium battery vertical to make it fit.

How well does this thing output video? My AIW card does it only fairly.

For what it's worth, you can configure a Dell OptiPlex GX260 small form factor or an SX260 with a low-end Celeron CPU for around $700 (no monitor) and then spend another $900 on the 20" flat panel display of doom. If silence matters more than oomph, these machines are hard to beat. Of course, you ge tempted to say "well, how about a larger hard drive, and a CD burner, and a faster CPU .." and next thing you know, you've added another $1000 to the machine.

The ones I have already are not that great at video, DVD playback is not possible. But they have one PCI slot, so the one under the TV has the RealMagic Xcard installed. Think you can get a riser card to give two PCI slots, but this would not work in the small [url=http://mini-itx.com/reviews/2688R/}Cubid Cases[/url] I use. Bigger cases are available though.

The new M9000 board is not only a faster processer, but also has much better multimedia support ( 5.1 sound, better video, uses faster memory, plus firewire and USB 2.0 ). As I said its sitting on my desk waiting for a case.

While we're on the subject of Mini-ITX, check this out.

Man I wish that I had the Japanese language pack installed......and that I could still read Japanese

So is the idea with that thing that you can roll your computer around on the floor? I wonder what use a ball-shaped PC could have...

world.altavista.com does a reasonable job on it.

However, my favorite part of the translation is the header ``With spatula drawing formation''.