[conspire] which box for: low end, low noise, low profile?

[Edmund J. Biow]

Speaking of quiet, compact fanless systems, if you make it by the 
Moscone Center for the LinuxWorld exhibits, check out the Polywell table 
on the farthest east row, near the distros.  They have a few very 
compact systems for $300, including a fanless VIA Epia model that only 
has room for an onboard 2.5" drive and an optical drive.  The thing was 
only a couple of inches high by about 7" by 6", but doesn't appear on 
their web site (http://shop.polywell.com/index.php). 

There is another very compact unit that they are hawking, also for $300, 
that looks like it would make quite a ducky desktop machine, a little 
larger, with room for a 3.5" drive, and a little more muscle, as well;
Intel D945GTP MicroATX MB w/LAN,VGA
. Intel Pentium-4 Processor 631 3.0GHz LGA-775 2M
. 1GB  DDR2 667MHz  PC5300 Dual Channel Memory
. LD121 Slim microATX Desk/Tower Case w/250W P/S
. 80G SATA-II HD 7200/8MB
. Standard 104Keys PS/2 KB
. PS/2 Mouse
. 52X CD-ROM Drive Standard IDE
. On-board 7.1 3D Audio Sound
. On-board Integrated Intel 950 Graphics
. On-Board Intel 10/100Mbit Ethernet
. System Assembly and Packaging
 http://shop.polywell.com/product_info.php?cPath=89_137&products_id=582
The box seemed to have a lot of extra ports on the back for 6 channel 
audio and something that looked like component video.  I understand the 
Intel 945 will do Beryl/CompizFusion/whatever with reasonable grace 
using open source drivers, but the machine apparently has a pair of 
PCI-E slots and 2 regular PCI slots.

Cute little boxes from a local Linux-friendly vendor, if I weren't 
choking in hardware I might have considered one.

Ed Bob sez,

Check it out...