AOpen Digital Engine DE2700 WW Intel 945GSE Black Mini / Booksize Barebone System

Pros: I use these for just about everything! I've set them up as print servers, monitoring systems, firewalls (2x 1gb/s NICs), access points (WLAN Card added separately), mounted vehicle compute, kiosk signs (mounts easy behind a TV or monitor). But what I personally use mine for is a network monitor and a LCD TV. Its been on for about 5 months and no problems!!!. I recommend pfsence firewall as your choice of firewall if used for this. Also there very easy to setup; hit DEL to enter BIOS, easy to add WLAN card, easy to disassemble. I use a SSD drive to eliminate some of the head a hard disk makes, plus it makes it more sturdy for G force hits and bumps while running. Low power consumption. Very small!

Cons: One DVI output (it would be nice to run dual monitors on one. But if your using to advertise just use a DVI splitter to make two duplicate screens.)

Overall Review: 1GB of RAM is included! I am not sure if I missed it but there was RAM in it when I got it.

Pros: Quiet, low power, completely solid state unless you put a mechanical HDD. Fast enough to play MKV video files with no problem. I use it as a multi-media machine running Ubuntu and can play music, videos (not ISO images), surf the web, etc... Video plays well with my 32" TV with no blurring or choppiness, and audio out is strong enough to drive a set of speakers.

Cons: Will not boot from the CF if an HDD is installed also, at least as far as I can tell. Not quite powerful enough to open a DVD image file. Be careful driving an amp with the audio out; I overpowered my amp and had to wait for it to reset. The NIC's in the one I got use the R8168 chipset which is not open source, so Debian will not install out of the box. I had to use Ubuntu.

Overall Review: I have a friend who is using these also for site-to-site VPN routers (OpenVPN) running IPFire. It works well for him. I purchased this to test as a router for resale, but it has taken over as my media player so I'll have to get another for that testing. You can install one mini-pci device in it which are available on the web.

Pros: This device is awesome. It's tiny, fanless and low power with 2 x NICs. It comes with 1GB of RAM and has removable space for an HDD or CF card. It is THE perfect open source firewall appliance. I used an old HDD and installed pfSense on these little guy and it is working great. Much better than some of the other dedicated Monowall/pfSense network appliances I bought - and cheaper too! No fans means that it's quiet with less points of failure. I'm going to start using these for all our router/firewall installations.

Cons: None

Overall Review: Well it's not a con, it would be nice if I could get a miniPCIe NIC card for this thing to increase the interface capabilities. I couldn't find one and I'm not sure if it would be usable if I did. Just a thought - this thing with 3-4 NICs (for DMZ or something similar) would be unbeatable.

Pros: Silent, no moving parts, solid construction.

Cons: None

Overall Review: The system comes with 1GB of memory already, which you can upgrade to 2GB (buy buying a single 2GB stick). The description for the item doesn't mention this anywhere (just the vague 1x200Pin). Another reviewer mentioned not being able to use Debian with this system. That may be true, as Debian uses older kernels. I can confirm that all Linux kernels at least as new as 2.6.32 support the network cards in this system. Realtek does offer drivers for the NIC on their website, but with any modern distribution (or by compiling your own kernel), you won't need their driver.

Pros: Silent Running. No moving parts to fail. I was able to get this to boot from a CF card, with a 500 gb green on the sata connection. It was fun finding a "fixed disk" CF card, but once I had it (RiData 600X Lightening Series), performance jumped considerably. Be sure to disable write caching on the CF card, and enable on the spinning hard drive.

Cons: Limited Bios. It worked for me, but missed a couple of features found in DEX4501.

Overall Review: Completely satisfied with it. I have 2 running now, and am going to build 3 more. Utlizing for Security Camera recording and remote access.

Pros: 2 gbit NIC's on a dual core ATOM platform, fanless, ships with 1GB RAM expandable to 2GB, and you don't have to crack the case to add a drive or CF card. pfsense works great on this box, installs without issues and all the hardware is supported, including power saving functionality.

Cons: The price point is such that I can't replace my entire home network infrastructure with a bunch of these in one single paycheck (I also have kids).

Overall Review: e-sata would be nice but there are other small boxes in the same class with that feature, this box shines with 2 gbit NICs. There are no ps2 ports for people who fret about such things. some FYI... this device looks to be marketed by AOpen as a digital sign display driver type of machine and the device is actually designed to me mounted to the back of a modern flat panel display.

Pros: Small footprint, sips power slowly, dual gBit NICs, quiet due to passive heatsinks, supports booting from a cfCard, great to use as a router appliance.

Cons: The blue LED is super bright and there is no option to disable it, the NICs are Realteks.

Overall Review: Ok, there is little info on these available online so I will summarize a few things for people that either own these already or are looking to buy one. 1. Press delete to get into the BIOS upon boot. 2. You need to have the HDD unplugged if you want to boot from the CF Card. 3. The NICs are as listed from dmesg under linux, and they will run under BSD (ie. pfSense) RTL8111/8168B PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet controller (rev 03) 4. It supports a 2GB stick of memory. 5. Quiet boot can be disabled in the BIOS.

Pros: Small, dual NICs, ships w 1GB RAM installed (mine came with Apacer CL6), N270 does hyper-threading, has 2 serial ports, DVI, audio (not that you'll need it for pfSense), 4 USB 2.0, and did I mention it was small?

Cons: Gets a little warm during normal use, no worse than my MBP, but still pretty warm - I may look at modding it with a fan to make it last longer. Front panel NIC activity lights would be nice - yet another mod (board has connectors for them).

Overall Review: I slapped a 32GB SSD in it and now I am cooking with gas baby! This really is a great little platform and I will probably be picking up a couple more for various tasks around the house.