The Mini koobox: AOpen's MiniPC in disguise

What do you do when you're a maker of just another mini PC? Relaunch under a new name of course. Calling itself the "first small form-factor Linux machine on the market" (which isn't even remotely true) the Linspire Mini Koobox is just the AOpen MiniPC running Linspire's flavor of Linux, all bundled up and shoved out the door of Mirus Innovations. Unfortunately, this ain't the Core Duo MiniPC CNET was so impressed with, this dog brings a 1.5GHz CeleronM 370 proc, 256MB DDR2 RAM, a 40GB, 5400RPM disk, slot loading DVD combo drive, and the usual suite of USB 2.0, Firewire, and media-outs. In fact, this is nearly the same box AOpen was touting last year only this time without the Mac mini, ehem, inspired dress. Priced at $400, they throw in speakers, a mouse, and keyboard this time and maybe even a little whine.

[Via PRNewswire]

[(Unverified) Posted Jun 29th 2006 9:15AM]

Now that Mac minis are Intellified, where's the attraction? Or am I just overzealous?

[(Unverified) Posted Jun 29th 2006 1:47PM]

Linspire, The Linux Distro that you love to hate.

[SilverTrumpet Posted Jun 29th 2006 3:40PM]

While I'm not in love with the specs, that price is getting into the "Dangerously Tempting" range.

I am unwilling to load Linux permanently onto my computers, instead using VMWare and/or bootable CDs/DVDs to check out the operating system. For this reason, I've been looking for a cheap small box I can use to try out Linux natively - maybe this is it. I can provide my own mouse, keyboard, screen, etc. so I hope they offer an even cheaper version including just the box... and I hope the RAM is user-upgradeable, because 256MB is seriously anemic on a modern PC (even for Linux).