Shuttle's Linux-based KPC desktop gets reviewed

It's not often we see a desktop surrounded by hordes of folks just waiting for reviews in order to pull the trigger (or not), but Shuttle's Foresight Linux-based KPC is one of those machines. The Celeron 430-powered box actually managed to hold its own, and oftentimes best, an overclocked 3.2GHz Pentium 4 rig in a number of everyday tasks (read: Office use, web browsing, etc.), and of course, accessing the internals in order to load in upgrades of your own was a lesson in simplicity. All in all, the KPC seemed to be a bargain for the price, particularly if you've got a spare mouse, keyboard and monitor already collecting dust and scouting a new partner in crime. Check out the read link to see precisely how this bugger scored an 8.0 out of 10 from Computer Shopper.

[digitallysick @ Mar 24th 2008 9:35PM]

DO WANT!

[TRAFFICBLOWS @ Mar 24th 2008 9:40PM]

ehh it's not a 10 out of 10.

[John B @ Mar 24th 2008 9:52PM]

@TRAFFICBLOWS:

If you're expecting perfection in everything, you're going to have one hell of a miserable life. :P

[TRAFFICBLOWS @ Mar 25th 2008 8:47AM]

I certainly don't expect perfection in everything, but I do want it in my gadgets! Who here doesn't?


I just have a ton of other 8.0/10.0 parts littering my basement so, personally, at this point it's gotta be top notch to justify a non-bargain price for a PC that can match a P4.

[MEAT! @ Mar 24th 2008 9:40PM]

"...Memory: 512KB..."

Wow. No way. You can get computers with that much memory these days??

[gfar @ Mar 24th 2008 9:46PM]

There's a new trick to put your page file on a floppy disk, you get a wicked gain.

[MEAT! @ Mar 24th 2008 9:53PM]

Have you heard about those new double density disks? They can hold like 1.44 MB! I could put, like, all my ASCII pron on that!

[Mobius_1 @ Mar 24th 2008 11:41PM]

What's a floppy? (digging into the deepest parts of my brain right now)

[Nathan @ Mar 25th 2008 1:07AM]

@Mobius

Floppy: What happens when you have to resort to ASCII pr0n

[MattyG @ Mar 25th 2008 4:47AM]

should be enough for anybody





/bill gates

[tekdemon @ Mar 26th 2008 2:56AM]

Double Density floppies only hold 720KB silly, you'll have to wait AT LEAST another couple of years before those High Density 1.44MB floppies come out.
One can only dream!

[Beata Yamin @ Mar 24th 2008 9:44PM]

nice

[Ethel Lewis @ Mar 24th 2008 9:52PM]

looks like a neat little device

[JohnH @ Mar 24th 2008 9:57PM]

Sold out on Newegg already and pre-order on the Shuttle site with an April 11th ship date. This one is going to be hot. I need to go get in line.
John

[ReggieXuk @ Mar 24th 2008 9:59PM]

I love the Pentium4, best processor ever. When it got cold, the heat from my pc came in handy.

[Abuzar @ Mar 25th 2008 12:52AM]

Psssh, your Pentium 4's heat is nothing compared to my Pentium D. I needed water cooling to make it run at stock speeds! lol

[Rev. Otto @ Mar 24th 2008 10:10PM]

I got one of the first units from newegg when it was still $199, it seems they are taking advantage of the popularity as it's price changed a few times over the day, topping out at $229. BAD NEWEGG.

I can't complain, it's a nice case, nice mobo, Celeron-L based on the Conroe core. The listed sata150 drive is really a sataII with a jumper on it (yank that sucker off, get full speed). They use Crucial memory, which I upgraded to 2gb right away. It doesn't have the heat pipe which kind of sucks seeing as they tout it as a feature of the system, apparently that comes with the barebones or as a feature for resellers.

Overall I've tried the installed Foresight Linux (Sucktastic rehash of Ubuntu with it's balls cut off) and XP SP3, with both running as well as the 3.2ghz P4 Prescott that the KPC is sitting on top of at the moment. Seeing as this supports any CPU from a 1.6ghz Celeron-L all the way up to the new Wolfdales, you have some room to breathe in the future with this lil cutie.

[Stevo @ Mar 24th 2008 10:50PM]

"Storage: 80GB hard drivee"

[Ubuntu 7.10+WindowsXP @ Mar 24th 2008 10:56PM]

Configuration should be:
AMD 780G motherboard
AMD Sempron LE 1.8 Ghz
512 MB DDR2 RAM
80 GB Hard Drive

Pre-installed: Kubuntu 7.10 + OpenOffice.org

That would be much better in my humble opinion. Now let bashing begin for be an AMD fanboy. In my defines I am not a fanboy of any kind for anything. I just think that the 780G would provide much much better graphics performance. Granted their are few games for Linux that would need it,but you know people that get these will install Windows XP or dual-boot to play some games.

[Ayle @ Mar 25th 2008 3:30AM]

While I think Amd would be good for the price, I can't help but remember that their linux drivers are garbage...

[Ubuntu 7.10+WindowsXP @ Mar 25th 2008 4:07PM]

True, but that was an issue that was addressed in the last Kernel update and the in the 8.06 Ubuntu. I picked 7.10 because it is more stable than 8.06, obviously the user will want to update the core when 8.10 comes out. That will correct the AMD driver issues and give you the power management and proper cool & quiet system

[Greg @ Mar 25th 2008 12:37AM]

Does anyone know if the motherboard on this thing has an IDE port? I see what might look like it in a pic but it could be for a floppy drive instead. Thanks.

[Gustavo @ Mar 25th 2008 12:31PM]

Still waiting the barebone one...

[Tim @ Mar 25th 2008 12:54AM]

Well this is great except NewEgg has deactivated the $99 and the $299 is still kinda pricey for a simple machine.

[0megapart!cle @ Mar 25th 2008 1:00AM]

I'm sure it would provide better graphics performance, but gaming is a trifling consideration for a system such as this. And the general application performance would be noticeably lower with a Sempron compared with a Conroe-based Celeron.

The thing is, the performance comparisons are really a joke. You don't compare Linux running on a recent PC with a several year old PC running Vista!!! These guys had to be chuckling to themselves as they wrote this!

[Rev. Otto @ Mar 25th 2008 2:25AM]

It does contain one IDE port, An Athlon based system would be half the value, and it will never be a gaming box, the chipset supports pci-e in x1 and x16 but sadly the only slot is pci (brilliant). I did put an ATI HD2400 pci video card in though, just to be a objectionable to common sense and it actually made it a really nice media box. Don't forget you can still drop a Core 2 Duo into it and still be way below the average power consumption of a full sized box.

[Jesper P?son @ Mar 25th 2008 3:13AM]

Rev. Otto: How loud is it? They wrote in the review it was quite but how do you think it sounds? What is the loudest part, harddrive power supply? Will there be a sound increas if a put a Core2Dou stock cooling in it compared to the Celeron?

[Karl Viklund @ Mar 25th 2008 4:07AM]

I have a computer here at home that I built that is now running Linux. Nothing special with that.

[Greg @ Mar 25th 2008 5:54AM]

I just ordered the KPC K45 version for $100 barebones from alrightdeals.com

[Torgrim @ Mar 25th 2008 8:18AM]

I really want one. Does anyone know when/if they will be available in Europe?

[LordZargon @ Mar 25th 2008 10:43AM]

You can buy them off parnet sites listed from your country on the Shuttle site. Might get lucky!

So far for the UK, all I can find is one site selling the barebones for a nice [whopping] £99 ($198)...

[dbs @ Mar 25th 2008 10:45AM]

So this is a fascinating little machine, but I'm sort of puzzled about the performance specs. There's notes that it's outperforming a 3.2gig overclocked P4, but we're talking a 1.8gig celeron. How can that be?

I'd be very interested in replacing my 2.26gig P4 with something like this - lower power, quieter, but only if it were a significant speed boost.

Can anyone comment to that?

[Jesper P?son @ Mar 25th 2008 12:47PM]

Have in mind that they are comparing a P4 3,2Ghz running Vist and MS office with a Celeron 1,8Ghz running Ubuntu(Linux) and Open Office in the review! I would bet that the Celeron is slower if they where to compare under the same circumstances(spelling?. But my recomendation for you would be to buy the barebone system for 99$ put a Core2Dou like 2-2,4 Ghz and 2GB memory and a 500GB harddrive(your chioce of course) in it. That would out preform your current setup, the only problem a see is the integrated graphicscard that is very slow. Not so good att Vistas Aero glass gui but you might be able to find a decent PCI grapichs card that you could put in it(not that there is no PCI-E slot avalible)

Hope that helpt some

[Ray @ Mar 25th 2008 1:53PM]

I can understand the ommision of an optical drive for the price point. But why no provisions in the face plate to add an internal one later? So now you have to purchase a more expensive optical drive to run from USB instead. Shuttle always seems to get soooo close to the finish line and then trips at the end of the race. And just so you know my perspective, I currently own 5 XPC's of various vintage.

[Ubuntu 7.10+WindowsXP @ Mar 25th 2008 4:29PM]

I stick to my previous point that an AMD build version with the new 780G chipset/ graphics unit would be a far better choice. I also agree with Ray, there should be a way to put an Optical drive in the box somewhere. Even if the slot restricted you to a slim DVD drive (half 5.25 DIMM size) that would have been a great option. It would be really cool if the face slide to one side to show the slim DVD drive.

[PiZ @ Mar 25th 2008 5:54PM]

I bought mine from an italian e-shop today.. i should receive it in the next few days! :)

[arbilli @ Mar 29th 2008 1:45PM]

ordered one for myself off of Ebay. Plus I went a little nuts on Newegg, and bought some fairly good parts.
Core 2 Duo E4600 2.4 Ghz
2gb of Mushkin DDR2 667 Ram
WD 500gb hard drive

That and I'll be using a 32gb Samsung SSD I've got laying around. I should get pretty good performance for a Linux box.