JOrdan Running shops for a carmp3:



Though I'm sure you're all sick of me talking about my homebuilt car MP3 player that, while perfect in design, has yet to, well, exist, it just keeps getting better. Today, Slashdot linked to this review of Shuttle's SV24 small form-factor barebones system. The case is 10.7" deep, 7.6" wide, and 6.4" tall (270 x 190 x 160mm) and made out of lightweight aluminum. The motherboard is packed with good stuff, including onboard Ethernet, audio (front-mounted output & input), S-video, composite (TV-out), and VGA video output, and both USB (front-mounted) and Firewire (!). It supports Socket 370 CPUs (Celeron and P3). On top of that, it has a hard drive bay, plus one 5.25" empty drive bay and one 3.5" bay, and one PCI slot.



The review gives it 5/5 and an Editor's Choice award. Though it borders on overkill for a simple CarPC, that's about the only strike against it. It lists for $250, but doesn't come with a processor, memory, or hard drive. Pricewatch says that two 64MB DIMMs ($3 each), a 40GB hard drive ($75), and a 500Mhz Celeron ($30) would set me back $111. That's $361 for a fully operational computer system that you could easily carry under one arm (I'd be inclined to attach a handle to the top).



Why this instead of the $200 "New Internet Computer" above? First and foremost, no hacking necessary. Using the N.I.C. would always feel kludgy for me.