Digital Home Thoughts: Sudhian Reviews the Shuttle X100

"Shuttle’s newest addition to the XPC family is the smallest XPC ever released. It measures in at 8.27” (W) x 2.1” (H) x 11.76” (D) which is roughly two inches wider and five inches deeper than an Apple Mac mini. Although it is a little bit bigger than a Mac mini it’s still relatively small and compact. Aesthetically the X100 is a hit or miss. Users will either love it or hate it. Nevertheless we think it’s an attractive little system that reminds us of the original Nintendo Entertainment System. An aluminum accent strip graces the top and part of the front bezel. The aluminum accent leads into a 4-in-1 memory card reader that accepts SD, MMC, Memory Stick and Memory Stick Pro. Below the card reader is a blue power LED. While the blue LED isn’t too obnoxious it would’ve been nice to see another color used, perhaps amber or white. A single front mounted USB 2.0 port is available for the end user—a feature neither the Apple Mac mini nor AOpen mini PC have. Every Shuttle X100 system comes with a slot-load optical drive. Two optical drive options are available from Shuttle—a DVD-Rom/CD-RW and a dual-layer compatible DVD burner."



A great review of Shuttle's new X100, a pint-size unit from Shuttle that packs serious punch for digital media tasks. This thing can accept a 750 GB hard drive (although Shuttle doesn't offer that as an option unfortunately), making it ideal for mass-media storage. For my own personal needs, I wish it had dual DVI ports, but it would still make a useful workstation computer. And if you connect an Adaptec external USB dual-tuner, you have one killer (yet small) MCE machine.

Sudhian also has a review of a brand-new model coming out soon, the SD37P2, which supports the new Core 2 Duo and Core 2 Extreme CPUs from Intel. Talk about power in a small package!