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Average user rating:
- My rating: 0 stars
Full user review
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4.5 stars
"Small beautiful quick machine, as pretty as an Apple"
Pros: Looks great, perfectly good components for just about any task, small,
Cons: limited hours for customer support, 3 - 4 week delay in arriving due to AMD backlog, some fan noise, only 1 cd/dvd space
Summary: OK, this machine looks great. The first thing you notice is before you take it out of the box, how light the box is. Finally a PC I can carry. It is the only good looking PC I have ever seen, no more bland towers, crazy Falcons or Aliens painted on, no flashing fluorescent lights and tubes, just a good looking shiny black box, it looks like the sort of thing Apple would make. Plenty of USB ports, the option of built in wireless network. 3 hard drives installed (my set up AMD 64 FX-62 dual core, 2GB DDR, 7950 Nvidia, 150 gb 10K RPM x2, 250 gb 7500 rpm, wireless network, Office SB Edition, W XP).
They do lack bundled software but you can get software anywhere and I already owned the games I want to play on it. Customer support was very helpful in explaining the delays and checking regularly on the status of the machine. Once the AMD parts arrived I had it within 1 week. They do have limited office hours for support but so far no problems. There is some limitation on the hardware setup available but as the people at Best Buy told me when I described the system, "Rock solid components, it will do anything you need it to do". And it does. Goodbye Gateway tower, you have served me well, love my Shuttle. The fans do make some noise, but it is like a background hum, they kick out some heat as well. I think the noise is more noticeable because you can actually have this machine as a "desktop" as opposed to an enormous tower under the desk. I keep thinking I would like 2 cd/dvd players, but really there is no need for 2 I was just used to it in the big tower.
Overall, I think it is a great looking machine, which is very quick and will handle all the computing needs for many years. In four years I will by the latest machine with direct x11, 8 core processors and 10gb ram. Hopefully it will be made by Shuttle.
