French firm Linutop has launched its latest micro desktop: the model 4. An evolution of the its predecessor rather than a completely new machine, the 4, like the 3, has a 1.6GHz Intel Atom CPU, 1GB of memory and 2GB of Flash storage for Linutop's own custom version of Ubuntu. Linutop 4 Linutop sees the 201 x 182 x 30mm, …

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Wednesday 11th May 2011 10:51 GMT Anonymous Coward

How Much !

Far too over priced.

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1. Wednesday 11th May 2011 20:14 GMT Ammaross Danan
  
  By far
  
  Drop the price down to a 200-range and put 32GB of flash in there instead of whatever HDD it's likely pimping, and it would be considerable. Could always stuff a USB-based HDMI port off the back too...
  
  2 2
  1. Wednesday 11th May 2011 23:43 GMT Lance 3
    
    What HDD
    
    It has 2GB of flash storage, there is no HDD that comes with it. The OS takes roughly 800MB of storage, so that leaves 1.2GB for the user.
    
    The price is way too expensive though, but you are paying for their software too. They should just sell a bare-bones system
    
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Wednesday 11th May 2011 10:51 GMT Arnold Lieberman

Seems pretty expensive to me

For what is basically a netbook without the screen or keyboard. No more than £100 would be reasonable. And no HDMI port or SPDIF output = not good for media playback.

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Wednesday 11th May 2011 11:07 GMT James Hughes 1

Nice, but

perhaps a little too expensive when you can get Acer Revo's or eMachines mini PC thingies for £150 or so.

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Wednesday 11th May 2011 11:08 GMT Phil A.

Hit with the ugly stick

That's one ugly computer. It's also very, very expensive for what it is, and it's not even that small.

Can't see why anyone would want to buy that

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Wednesday 11th May 2011 11:08 GMT Matt Bryant

In-car entertainment system, anyone?

Perfect for in-car video with a couple of seat-back monitors, MP3 player, sat-nav with an external (USB) GPS sensor and maybe an external 3G modem. Bit pricey, though. I don't know anything about Linutop so no idea if it would make a good NAS header.

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Wednesday 11th May 2011 11:08 GMT Bob H

Economies of scale.

Costs about €80 to make (at most), so there is a hell of a mark-up there OR they don't think they can sell many and haven't managed to get the cost of production down with economies of scale.

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Wednesday 11th May 2011 11:08 GMT Ian Ferguson

How much?!

Sad :(

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Wednesday 11th May 2011 11:09 GMT Dave Hooper

Like a cut down version of the fit-pc?

The fit-pc2 has all that plus HDMI, SPDIF, Wi-Fi and IR, for the same kind of $$. And (according to the marketing material), lower power consumption. And about half of the size. And 8GB SSD.

http://www.fit-pc.com

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Wednesday 11th May 2011 11:09 GMT Anonymous Coward

Rebadged T1

Looks like an Aleutia t1, but far less customisable and more expensive.

You can get wifi or a hd decoder into the t1.

http://www.aleutia.com/products/t1

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Wednesday 11th May 2011 11:09 GMT Anonymous Coward

Title

I can see why you might want one for say £50 - £100 but

with warranty and postage 400+55+28 = 483 Euro That's £421 well you would have to have a screw loose to buy one.

No hard disk either, just why would you buy one, you could mangle a netbook for £200 less and get more.

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Wednesday 11th May 2011 11:09 GMT Anonymous Coward

wot, no wifi?

pricey too

nice try though

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Wednesday 11th May 2011 11:14 GMT regadpellagru

Fit PC

largely cheaper and less power hungry:

http://www.fit-pc.com/web/fit-pc2/fit-pc2-specifications/

And the box is all in aluminium !

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Wednesday 11th May 2011 11:14 GMT Anton Ivanov

This costs more than a proper thin client

A new thin client costs about the same. A second hand one can be obtained from a reputable retailer for 150, even less from fleebay.

It will have better cooling, better expansion, better mounting and fixing options.

Forget it.

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Wednesday 11th May 2011 11:29 GMT Allan 1

At that price...

At that price, I can buy a proper (albeit low-end) notebook instead, and still have change for the pub,

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Wednesday 11th May 2011 11:50 GMT Nick Galloway

So much for so little

Someone is having a laugh at that price. I was thinking of picking up such a device based on the description, then saw the price!

How about someone takes one apart just to see if there is a nice easy way to upgrade the storage and posibly RAM.

Nice try, beter luck next time!!!

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Wednesday 11th May 2011 11:50 GMT Anonymous Coward

Erm, GPL anyone?

Is it just me or are these guys selling a linux distro for €80 and not offering a free download?

http://www.linutop.com/shop/product_info.php?products_id=52&osCsid=7267a389f7d03c7bad8059ea1823ef5b

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1. Wednesday 11th May 2011 12:42 GMT Anonymous Coward
  
  Re: Erm, GPL anyone?
  
  "Is it just me or are these guys selling a linux distro for €80 and not offering a free download?"
  
  They don't need to offer you a download (of the source for free or for a reasonable fee) unless you acquire the binary distribution from them. That's what the GPL actually says.
  
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Wednesday 11th May 2011 11:51 GMT al 3

WTF !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! How Much ?????

Aw c'mon, I'm buying a fully loaded corporate PC with monitor, 3GHz /3Gb ram + Windows for less that this.

Price what the market will bear ???? snake oil, green ?

Price them at £75 with an ICA client on and I'll buy a pallet of them :-)

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Wednesday 11th May 2011 11:59 GMT david 63

I agree...

..with all of the above.

The business market may well fork out that kind of cash but I bought atom based micro desktop that screws on the back of the telly from novatech for 150quid less. If they would sell them without the windows tax, half the price*. And it has a hard drive. And built in wireless.

Don't overlook the French market though. I live there 8 months a year and they _will_ buy it because it is French with no regard for the price.

*I haven't got to the bottom of the 'legal reasons' that prevent them. Perhaps they mean commercial reasons.

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Wednesday 11th May 2011 12:07 GMT Mage

Useless for HD video

Don't bother adding USB DTT stick or PCI-e Satellite card.

The Intel GMA950 + Atom can't do MPEG4 AVC H.264 L4.

Also overpriced for hardware of a Netbook (similar spec at 1/2 the price?) without a screen

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Wednesday 11th May 2011 12:07 GMT Flocke Kroes

Rather buy a small cheap computer̼̊

http://armdevices.net/2011/05/06/25-arm-powered-desktop-presented-by-raspberry-pi-foundation/

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Wednesday 11th May 2011 12:39 GMT bertino

I built my own

Dual core atom with nvidia ION mobo, 2GB RAM, 64GB SSD, DVD drive, miniITX case for about 200 quid, mythbuntu, and it WILL do full HD, even plays 1080p flash videos.

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1. Wednesday 11th May 2011 12:54 GMT Anonymous Coward
  
  out of interest...
  
  which ION mobo?
  
  TIA
  
  0 0
  1. Wednesday 11th May 2011 13:55 GMT bertino
    
    A title is required
    
    An Asus one that had a PCI slot (not PCIe), it was the only one I could find with PCI, as I already had a DVB-S2 card which cost a lot......
    
    http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/Intel_CPU_on_Board/AT3N7AI/
    
    You need to tweek linux to use hardware accel for flash (basically add a file in the right place with a line in it to swtich it on!)
    
    2 0
  2. Thursday 12th May 2011 15:07 GMT Bob H
    
    Zotac Ion
    
    I've been looking at Zotac for a project. They had good reviews and good specification.
    
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Wednesday 11th May 2011 12:47 GMT Yet Another Anonymous coward

@GPL

There is no requirement to offer a free download, they only have to point you at the source code for each of the GPL apps they include.

Combining them together is not in the GPL

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Wednesday 11th May 2011 12:56 GMT Anonymous Coward

Build your own...

The motherboard is an Intel D945GSEJT ... got for about 80 quid. That exact same case is an EPC-01, less than 25 quid.

And no, it's useless for media playback - no H264,VC1, no HDMI, no 24p ... you can add the Broadcom miniPCIe card and it'll decode them, but it struggles on bandwidth for 1080p so you need to watch 1080p content scaled to 720p to get smooth playback.

Keeps the missus happy though watching media whilst she's cooking, which is fine by me.

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Wednesday 11th May 2011 22:22 GMT sam 16

Why so little flash?

Flash is cheap.

Flash is small.

Flash comes in large volumes in a single chip.

Why does this not have 16gb of flash on it?

Also worth noting, unless things have changed recently Ion support on linux is a bit weird. It feels very much like the manufacturer is trying to keep it closed source. The initial linux drivers were rather short on functionality. Assuming Lintop got advanced drivers to actually watch TV on the thing, maybe they are keeping their distribution off the web for a reason.

Note that you only have to give away GPL'd source to your customers. If you put a slip of paper in the box with the GPL on it and 'if you write to us enclosing a bankers draft for $3.54 then we will mail the source to you on paper at your address of initial registration", you are compliant.

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