Apple has produced some of the simplest yet elegant designs for computers, MP3 players, displays, and even little accessories such as the iSight. Every time Apple launches a product there?s always another company attempting to make a pseudo look-a-like?Lian Li?s 1000, various MP3 players, and now the AOpen Mini PC. AOpen?s Mini PC first appeared at Computex 2005?five months ago. There was plenty of interest in the Mini PC and it was only a matter of time before AOpen would start selling the Mini PC to consumers.

Details of the shipping product started appearing at the beginning of the month with an expected availability of November 12th, 2005. It was reported the system would start out at $399 for the base configuration with a Celeron M and Linspire while Windows XP equipped systems start out at $499. Supposedly the system will also be available as a barebones?although there has been no confirmation on pricing or availability yet.

Barebones or not its quite clear AOpen is aiming to keep PC users from making the /switch/ by directly targeting the Mac mini in terms of size, price, and usage. The target market isn?t the hardcore gamer or engineers. Instead the primary target markets are the general consumer and possibly business?. These buyers aim to use a computer for internet surfing, word processing, and instant messaging on a daily basis. 3D performance isn?t too much of a concern in this market as most buyers could care less if they can play F.E.A.R. or not.

While the AOpen Mini PC and Apple Mac mini are based on totally different architectures and use different operating systems, they?re both entry-level personal computers for those seeking a simple box for surfing, chatting, interfacing with a digital camera, making home movies, and office applications. As there are no other similar systems on the market, we?ll be comparing the Mini PC to the Mac mini in a different manner than usual. Usually we?d run a bunch of benchmarks, make some pretty graphs and make a conclusion but this time around we?ll be comparing them as complete systems, evaluating the software, hardware differences, and its usability as an entry level system.

Test setup

Hardware

Apple PowerBook 12",
G4 1.5 GHz,
GeForce FX5200 64MB,
512MB DDR SO-DIMM,
80GB 5400RPM HDD,

AOpen Mini PC,
Pentium M 1.73 GHz,
512MB DDR2-533 SO-DIMM,
60GB 5400RPM HDD,

AMD Athlon 64 4000+ @ 1.8 GHz,
Gigabyte GeForce 6150,
AMD stock cooler,

Corsair Xpert Series XMS3200XL,

HGST 7K250 80GB,
Pioneer 16x slot-load DVD-Rom,

Silverstone ST60F 600 watt,

Software

Windows XP Service Pack 2,
Cinebench 2003,
ScienceMark 2,
SiSoft Sandra 2005,

Video playback

Windows Media Player 10 with WMV-HD hardware acceleration patch,
QuickTime 7,
DiVX Player 2.5.1 with ATI hardware post processing on,
HDTV Transport Stream ? Garden State 1080i, ripped from Motorola DVR,
h.264 ? Fantastic Four 480p
h.264 ? BBC Motion Gallery Reel 720p
WMV-HD ? Lewis and Clark 720p
WMV-HD ? Amazon (IMAX) 1080p
DiVX-HD ? Madagascar Trailer

Notes

Our CPU utilization tests were conducted using the Performance Counter Logs feature found under Administrative tools. We started the counter and then played the video clip and disregarded the first second of the log for our video playback tests.

We?d also like to thank Corsair for providing us with their Xpert Series memory for our test beds. If you?re looking for a high-end performance memory for overclocking or just want the best performance from your system, Corsair Xpert Series or XMS should be at the top of your list.

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• Hardware comparisons... (1 of 15)
• Software comparisons... (2 of 15)
• A closer look... (3 of 15)
• Cracking it open... (4 of 15)
• Cracking it open cont... (5 of 15)
• Size comparisons... (6 of 15)
• Some more images... (7 of 15)
• Power consumption, noise... (8 of 15)
• Test setup (9 of 15)
• SiSoft Sandra, Science Mark 2... (10 of 15)
• Cinebench 2003 (11 of 15)
• Video playback: HDTV, DIVXHD... (12 of 15)
• Video playback: WMV High Definition... (13 of 15)
• Video playback: h.264 High Definition... (14 of 15)
• Conclusion (15 of 15)