CompuLab FIT-PC2 Linux Nettop PC

Product Details

Product Reviews

(2 stars) - Looks good on paper but hardware problem
I purchased the fit-pc2 linux recently through my friend in USA. I am located in India. My intent was to use this PC as a 24X7 online home server that I intended to use as a centralized print server, scanner server, torrent download server and a file server. I had done pretty exhaustive online research before settling on this productfit-PC2 Linux (1.6 GHz Intel Atom, Fanless, 160 GB Hard Disk, Ubuntu Linux).
My key requirements were adequate CPU power and storage with low power consumption. This product fitted this bill ideally with a 1.6 GHZ Intel Atom CPU, 160 GB storage and just 8 watts power consumption.
However after having this item with me for a few days, the video display stopped working. I am pretty sure that it is a hardware problem as even the boot up BIOS messages are no longer displayed on my monitor. This might just be my bad luck or the odd bad product, but I was hoping for better.
I have since shipped this product back to Amazon and waiting for their response.

(5 stars) - don't have it yet but I hear its great
it is able to do output 1080p video with 2% cpu load. it sounds like the perfect HTPC solution to me. I will run it with VDR client against my VDR server, also use for watching movies over the network.

(5 stars) - 13.4 ounces of pure awesomeness!
This machine is the final result of two years of searching for the right machine:

I wanted a low-cost, low-consumption pc able to work as file server and music box. I got even more: Running Linux I can use it as a music player (running mpd and some remote clients on my iPhone and Laptop for controlling), a media center (connecting it to a HD-TV) and a file server. I can control almost everything with an IR-remote control. With its hardware acceleration i can even play 1080p videos! Next step will probably be to get myself an USB-DVB tuner to turn the machine into a digital video recorder - just everything.
In Fact, i just threw out my desktop pc. Only laptop and fit pc here.
Also: No fans, no mechanical parts except for the hard drive. And the quality seems perfect, too.

(5 stars) - Does Not Work Well With Linux. But Read On
Recently I decided to buy a second computer to use for web and multimedia (99 percent of what I do) and to leave the gaming machine off when not in use. The main reason for this was to reduce the my energy consumption while performing these low power tasks - the gaming machine was overkill. I combined the Fit-PC2, Thinkvision L1940P, and Windows XP. My energy consumption dropped from 240 watts to 30 with this combination. The Fit-PC2 is about one fifth the size of a laptop - tiny. I purchased the Fit-PC2 pre-loaded with Ubuntu 8.04. It ran well out of the box but certain applications were quite sluggish - Firefox web browser, and particularly multitasking. I upgraded to to Unbuntu 9 to see if the sluggish operation issues would clear up. Unbuntu 9 was much worse than Unbuntu 8.04 and in my opinion unusable. Over the next 3 days, I installed every version of Linux there was to see if I could get this machine working at an acceptable speed. Only 2 were fast on this machine: Slax Linux and Puppy linux. Both operated very fast with this machine and had the tools that I wanted to use for multimedia and web surfing, but some of their applications are out of date, particularly the web browsers would not support flash or other add-on type programs for web surfing. As a last resort, I pulled Windows XP Professional off of the shelf and installed it on my Fit-PC2 machine. I was certain that this machine would not have the power to handle a Windows install. To my surprise, when I booted up Windows XP this machine performed faster than even the tiny Linux installs. Windows XP Pro installed without a hitch on this machine, and it continues to perform almost as good as my 3000 dollar gaming machine for web and multimedia applications. My current setup uses only 30 watts of power which is less than a third of what a 100 watt light bulb consumes. The Fit-PC2 itself uses about 10-12 watts of power as measured at the plug outlet by a Kill-O-Watt meter. I highly recommend this machine to anyone interested in reducing their energy consumption or reducing their carbon footprint.

(5 stars) - Powerful Little Box
The Fit PC came with Ubuntu 8.04 and RTlinux on it. Really spunky machine. Out of the box the Wifi and ethernet worked with no problems. The only gotcha was the video interface HDMI->Digital, the only spare monitor I had was the old VGA Analog. I bought an adapter and all is well. Don't forget to keep this little machine well ventilated because it creates some heat. For a small box, it does a good job.

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