Imitation IS the Sincerest Form of Flattery...Again. :-)

nixgeek

Mac of the SubGenius! :-)
Well, it looks like the PC manufacturers are turning to Apple for design ideas again. Check out this Pandora Mini PC from AOpen. Bears a STRIKING resemblance to the Mac mini. ;)

http://www.legitreviews.com/article.php?aid=249

Considering the price point, it's not a bad system if you prefer Windows. What is nice is that they give you the option of having Linux installed. Maybe if they switch the CPU for something else I might consider it as a nice Linux machine. ;)

I'm sure I can put this past the wife since it's so small and won't take up space like my regular PC does. :D
 
I don't see how they substantiate the speed claim...I've used laptops running XP with 1.3Ghz Celeron M processors and they're not very quick...in fact my G3 900 iBook running in reduced-speed mode on the battery felt quicker than the other 2 running on cords. Given that, a 1.25GHz G4 should be a lot better.

I'm wondering why Apple hasn't done something to stop it yet...it's definitely a blatant rip-off of the Mini.
 
The Celeron is NOT faster than the G4. They'd need a big MHz gap to make up for the speed difference, and they don't have it. And with half the RAM, there's no way this will outperform a Mac mini.

It they sold it like a mini (with no monitor, keyboard or mouse), I'd find it much more appealing, personally.

I can't find this machine listed on AOpen's web site, so I'm still unsure of some things. For example, what kind of graphics card does it have? Or are they going the Dell route and not including any graphics card at all, instead relying on 64MB of system memory and "Intel Extreme Graphics"? If that's the case, then they can just kiss my rear end. The Mini's graphics card isn't the best out there, but at least it exists.

Also, what kind of monitor does it come with?

If they released the main unit alone for about $100 less, it would be a very attractive machine for "reverse-switchers" (or more likely, dual-platform users, because really, what kind of sicko would switch from the Mac?). $300 dollars for a Linux machine would be tempting, but $400 is a bit much. I have no need for another (probably crappy) monitor.

I definitely appreciate that they offer a cheaper Linux version, though. If only everyone did...
 
I do have to agree with you both about the Cely CPU. I'm not a fan of it, but I'm sure they did it in order to keep costs down. I don't know if it runs any cooler or not. Maybe they can include a Sempron CPU instead of the Cely.

As for the G4 on the Mac mini, I have played with it and even before the quiet speed bump it was quite speedy. And yes, if it does come with the Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 900 series it won't match the Mac mini as far as video performance since the mini has dedicated video memory as opposed to the shared memory on the Intel GMA 900 series. However, I have used PCs with the latest Intel graphics chipset and even though it shares the memory, the performance isn't all that bad for general usage.

As for the specs, the article states that AOpen hasn't given out any details on the specs other than what they were told by AOpen. This system was just announced during Computex 2005.
 
As for Apple's response, I think it's just a matter of watch and wait. I'm sure Apple was aware of it when it was shown at Computex 2005, and they could have done something about it. AOpen is supposed to release it this coming month, so we might see something happen before then or right then after.

Personally, I hope they don't stop it. I do like it as a Linux box, and so far I haven't seen anything worthy in the PC world regarding size and noise. This one seems to do a good job at both.
 
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