“Taking a second crack at the living room, Intel today showed off a concept PC that closely resembles Apple Computer’s Mac Mini. The chipmaker unveiled the prototype with AOpen at the Computex trade show in Taiwan,” Michael Singer reports for CNET News.
“According to Silent PC Review, AOpen’s Pandora device has a slot load CD disk drive and power button in the front with three USB ports, a keyboard hookup and a serial port in the back for hooking into displays. The computer also has internal wireless networking connectors and uses a single blower fan to keep it cool,” Singer reports.
Full article here.
SilentPCReview.com reports the unit will have a September market release date and has large images of the unit in their article here.
MacDailyNews Take: This one oughta perk up Apple’s legal department. It certainly is aptly named though. Pandora: afflicts all who “AOpen” it with the evils of Windows.
Related MacDailyNews articles:
AOpen Mac mini look-alike unveiled; based on Intel Pentium M, runs Windows – May 30, 2005
Well, it may be a rip off…But the hardware inside is what matters. It’ll smoke any Mini you put in front of it, Which is important to people…Fortunatly, price and performance go hand in hand in the wintel world and not in the mac (fantasy) world.
If the top of the case is metal, then there can’t be antennas for Wi-Fi or Bluetooth, like the Mac Mini has. I guess they had to cut something out to make room for a freekin’ Pentium processor to fit inside.
nono wrote:
“Well, it may be a rip off…But the hardware inside is what matters. It’ll smoke any Mini you put in front of it, Which is important to people…Fortunatly, price and performance go hand in hand in the wintel world and not in the mac (fantasy) world.”
smoke is right. Especially if you put in a P4 3.6Ghz into it.
Look at the lousy placement of vent holes. Air comes in at the top, above the optical drive and comes out from the top back, above the optical drive. No thought on airflow.
And the mini will beat the M class Pentiums in most tests.
I would love to see how Intel’s Mini compares to Apple’s. Will it have equal tech specs and still be cheaper? I doubt that. But it is foolish to assume that a 1.3 Ghz Pentium M will “smoke” a Mac Mini as nono seems to think. Show me the specs/price sheet and we’ll have a more informed discussion.
No doubt they try hard to feel proud of themselves. Must be difficult though.
Much as I like to pick on PC companies copying Apple’s designs, the comment that “there’s no new designs” in the PC world is not true.
The problem for PC makers is that there is less interest in actually paying extra for innovative designs because of price competition. After all, given the choice between buying a big box PC for $299 or a little tiny box PC for $799, I’d chose the big box PC unless I absolutely positively had to have a PC that fit on a bookshelf. Innovative design is wonderful, but I ain’t paying five-hundred extra dollars for it.
In the Apple world, we (arguably) pay extra for the innovative design because we have little choice. No one particularly feels rooked–if I’m going to pay more for a Macintosh, I certainly don’t want it to look like a cheap PC.
But I always wonder, if Apple built a PowerMac G5 that was packaged in a cheapo PC case and sold for $999 (with bundled cheapo PC monitor), how many would pay the extra $300 for iMac elegance?
True, true, but this sort of platform only has to take a miniscule part of the market before as many of these will be around as minis……..and then pandora will be the standard and mini the odd option.
As for litigation, I wonder.
Bastards!
Too bad there’s will only run that shit OS.
Out of Pandora’s Box all the evil and misery in the world came.
Bugs fly in through open windows.
As for the iMac Mini form factor an Intel box had that privilege about 10 years ago but with an incomplete spec. It did not last long. If you want grace and style combined with function – think Apple.
{Short} answer: failure.
Pandora = nobody knows what’s inside. How true.
And it doesn’t ship until 9-2005. What!?!
{} = MW
I’m impressed.
Imagine stuffing all those Windows viruses, worms, and Trojan horses into that tiny, little box.
And to think that I had imagined that the PC crowd lacked innovation.
What the frig is that?
I want my big honkin tower so I can crawl in there and upgrade the baby myself!
How can I get my cheapo, cheapest, cheapareno video cards, motherboards etc. and solder them into this piece of craparooonee?
Keep your toys Mac boys and leave the Magyvering to us.
Gigablertz … and beyond!
My brothers full size PC tower that the kids use is huge. It is the size of 45 mac Minis (3 deep by 15 high). It’s probably 45 times as loud as well.
When thieves broke into his house, they didn’t even bother to take it. They took the PowerMac of course, even though it’s very big.
I like the look of the AOpen (not as much as the Mac Mini). I’m glad to see it. Hopefully we’ll see a low priced 17″ aluminum 16:9 monitor to follow.
If Longhorn turns out to be any good. I could see myself buying a small PC like this, to run Longhorn.
My PC tower case, which is 5 years old now, is AOpen. So, I’ve heard of these guys before now. I’m not sure if they are Canadian, but I’ve seen many of their cases over time in Canada. They make a good case.
As MDN has pointed out before: “It’s the OS, stupid” THAT takes a LOT more effort to copy. In fact, they STILL are not even close to getting that right.
bandit bill-
I like your story.
I can hardly wait to install anti-virus software on that baby!!!!
It’s so cutting edge!! Yessiree!!!
Two words… Audio In…
I’m really sorry but, No PC user worth his salt is going to buy a PC that doesn’t come with a 3.5″ floppy drive. Ain’t gonna happen. No how, no way.
… and don’t even get me going on the missing cup holder!
I agree with PC Guy: no way am I going to buy a tin like that. Upgradability, one of the stronger points of the Wintel world, is out of the window with such a case.
Down with minis, down with laptops!
More power to towers! 😀
Webmaster’s apprenitice: I still miss my 5 1/4″ FDD
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No, not really. Haven’t used a floppy drive in ages. Those died with the rise of the USB stick. I’d be amazed if even conveyor belt produced Wintel PCs come with FDD anymore. (Not that I’d know. I tinker my ninja PCs together myself.)
Sad that all you Apple-guys can’t see your frontend from your backend … PC’s have had tiny designs for years now. Did they look as good as the minimac ? Not all did, some did, some didn’t. That’s what you get when all asian motherboard and/or case-manufacturers start building these tiny boxes to show off their skills. Did any of those companies accuse Apple of stealing their idea for a tiny little computer ? Nope. Stop your whinig and get over it that you guys pay more than the average PC for the design. Get over it that Apple is the biggest monopolist in the world (our hardware, our software, our external hardware, our fileformats …) and stop complaining against PC-users. We are not the ones with just one OS. We have MS, we have Linux, we have Unix, we (used to) have BeOS, we have BSD, we have Solaris and so on and so on. What do you have ? A rip-off from a BSD-flavor. You don’t have an Apple-OS anymore. You have Unix …