[geeks] VIA $49 "Neo-ITX"

[Jonathan Groll]

On Mon, 28 May 2012 09:20:36 -0400, Lionel Peterson <lionel4287 at gmail.com> wrote:

> On May 27, 2012, at 8:04 PM, "Joshua D. Boyd" <jdboyd at jdboyd.net> wrote:
> 
> > On 05/27/2012 02:45 PM, Lionel Peterson wrote:
> >> You'd pull an Atom board for this Smartphone-based board? Why? There is so
> >> much less functionality than the Atom (256 Meg RAM, 2 Gig flash storage,
> no
> >> SATA, an HDMI only video out, etc.)...
> >
> > 2 gig of flash storage doesn't sound so bad.  After all, a D525MW comes with
> only 1 meg of flash storage.
> 
> What? That 1 meg on the Atom MB is to hold the BIOS (I assume), the 2 Gigs on
> the VIA board is considered mass storage, removing the need for, say, SATA or
> IDE ports/drives, and provides for program and end user data storage.
> 
> The VIA board is essentially a smartphone with an HDMI port and runs on wall
> power - the Atom board you compared it with is essentially a low power
> dual-core P4 system in a small form-factor. Each may excel at certain
> applications, but I'm having a hard time thinking of a situation where an
> Android-based halfITX MB would be a better fit than an Atom MB FOR MOST USERS.
> (The novelty of running Android aside.)

Not sure if I would want a collocated ARM box myself, but I can
certainly see the attraction:
http://www.ewanleith.com/blog/956/my-60-arm-server

Cheers,
Jonathan
--
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