More Power To The Little Guys

When combined with the Windows XP Media Center 2005 operating system—available only to system builders—AOpen's XC Cube lets system builders deliver customized, compact and powerful digital media systems for less than $1,000.

The XC Cube is a sleek, black aluminum cube-style desktop case containing a motherboard, a 275-watt power supply and a TV/FM tuner PCI card installed in the motherboard's single PCI slot. A large vacuum fluorescent display on the front panel shows system status. The seven-in-one media reader is compatible with all popular memory cards.

A door on the front panel conceals an S/PDIF connector, a microphone and headphone jacks, two USB 2.0 ports and two FireWire ports. A remote control is included with the system.

System builders must supply a processor, memory, hard drive, optical drive and operating system, specifically the Windows XP Media Center 2005 operating system. The XC Cube has a list price of $450.

The AOpen motherboard is based on the Intel 865G chipset. It supports 400MHz, 533MHz and 800MHz FSB processors; two DIMM slots support 266MHz, 333MHz and 400MHz dual-channel DDR memory. The motherboard features on-board 865G Intel Extreme AGP 8x video, a sound card and a NIC. It also has an AGP slot for an optional graphics processor upgrade. The back panel has mouse and keyboard connectors, a serial port, a parallel port, a FireWire port, S/PDIF out, audio connectors, a 10/100 network port and two USB 2.0 ports. An included disc contains all necessary hardware drivers.

Name: XC Cube AV
Price: $450
Distributors/Integrators: Direct from vendor
Company: AOpen
San Jose, Calif.
408-232-1200
www.aopen.com