[TriLUG] MintBox

[Bill Farrow]

On Mon, Jul 9, 2012 at 11:05 AM, Gmail <reginald.reed at gmail.com> wrote:
> Interesting hardware but it seems a bit on the expensive side.  I'm hoping that
> hardware like this drops in price quickly.  The sub $400 for the basic box or
> even better sub $300 for a basic with no  RAM or HD would be even better.

I don't think the price is unreasonable.  Last year I bought a Jetway
Mini-Top all-in-one mini PC for ~$350 and ran MythTV and xmbc on it.
The unit overheats and crashes on high loads, like when watching Hulu
at 1080p.  The heat pipe had the CPU at one end, the north bridge, and
NVIDIA GPU in the middle, and a noisy little turbo fan at the other
end.  It was louder than my desktop (which now sits under my TV in the
living room).

The amount of time, effort, and frustration, not to mention the loss
of WAF (wife acceptance factor) has cost more than I would like to
think about.  Next time I build a media center PC I will gladly pay
for something more solid and no fans.

Bill