What do you think about these compact all-in-one little boxe

[FrogMaster 0]

Almost all in subject.

A lot of new mini-boxes have been shown at the last CeBit.

I am considering taking one to recycle a PIII 1Gig and some ram sticks which are laying around and build an all-purpose box: router-firewall-lan party-take away on vacations-backup box-mobile dvd player-whatever...

It seems that some of these new boxes would have enough room to plug in a voodoo 5 5500 pci for better than on-board video. Power could be an issue thu.

Would need an lcd display too.

It seems the complete set up could be much cheaper and maybe more reliable (always on) than a high-end laptop for equivalent performance.

Video and display performance are my main concerns.

Any idea?

[clutch 1]

I think that they are pretty cool myself. Usually the onboard audio is enough for me on most of my systems, so all I am ever concerned about is the NIC and video. While I am a major fan of Intel chipsets (and SiS isn't doing that bad recently), I generally see only Via setups (or worse) as the backbone of these little boxes. However, I wouldn't make one of these my main workstation anyway so as long as it was stable and not needing a ton of updates I think it would be worth trying out.

[sapiens74 0]

I think its a novelty now, but they shrink it more to where its almost a pda, then that would be cool