Question 1

does this have windows os installed on it?

Accepted Answer

No it does not it also does not come with a hardrive or ram installed. You will have to purchase a laptop harddrive and one stick of laptop DDR3. The intel WIFI card is quirky took me forever to get it functioning properly, has an issue w/ WPA2 encryption. I would avoid this product if you do not have a good deal of experience building systems.

Question 2

Will this run Ubuntu? If so, 32 or 64 bit?

Accepted Answer

Yes, it will - I have run both the 32 bit and 64 bit flavors, including 13.04.  At the moment some machines I have run Centos 6.4 (64 bit) using 4 GB RAM -- works flawlessly in production environments.

Question 3

How many volts is the power brick? I plan on buying this and running it from a battery.

Accepted Answer

The power adapter is 19V 3.42A 65W. This computer is a neat little toy, but I wouldn't count on any satisfactory video performance. I have purchased 2 of these, one for a customer and one for myself, and although I don't regret the purchase for this price point, you really have to tweak the settings to get decent video performance. I have tried Windows 7 x64, Ubuntu 13.10 64 bit, and Ubuntu 13.10 running KDE/kubuntu desktop. Although everything "works", video performance and even things like scrolling quickly on partially loaded websites will hang it for a few seconds before it catches up. Compared the the models from a couple years ago that they were putting Nvidia ION2 chips in, and these boxes definitely lag. Overall, I'm turning the one I kept for myself into a small box to run a LED sign display. Currently Xubuntu runs the best for me, and VGA is the only way to get its full resolutions (HDMI should not even be included as poor as the graphics support is on this GMA 3150), but I still cannot play even the lowest res Youtube videos in full screen. Buy at your own discretion. Price good, frustration bad.

Question 4

What is the minimum cost extra hardware that I have buy to support windows 7 64 bit, Microsoft Office, vga monitor, and internet explorer with this unit?  cpu? memory? hard drive? wireless keyboard/mouse?

Accepted Answer

Hello,
   When I put this together, I put 4 gig of memory in and just got a small 250 gig hard drive. As far as Windows 7 64 bit goes it's not needed as 4 gig is all the memory this will handle, so 32 bit is fine (though I to put 64 bit on it, it works fine). Office runs ok, the vga out put works good, I'm using this to stream video through IE 11 wirelessly, works well. You will need to remember this is not a powerful machine so be patent, but for just general use (internet, email, etc) it works fine. I used the cheapest memory I could find on Newegg same with the hard drive, over all I would give this 5 stars, works well for what it is.
      Greg

Question 5

new to this.......this says the ram is DDR3 800 for this machine........can i use DDR3 SO-DIMM DDR3 1066, 204 pin? im guessing that this is the clock speed. just not sure if i can put faster ram in a slower motherboard.

Accepted Answer

Yes, however, DO NOT use any RAM that has not been confirmed as compatible by Foxconn or fellow reviewers.  I have corrupted the sucks of high end RAM on this machine and curse the day I decided to buy it.  If you ever get a problem on startup where the blue activity light briefly turns on, then the entire system shuts off (in other words, it refuses to stay on and proceed to boot) the RAM has likely been fried by the system.

Question 6

Does this support Windows XP?

Accepted Answer

Yes, it runs XP very well. Also runs Win7, both 32bit and 64bit.

Question 7

I would like to use this product to watch mp4 movies on a monitor with hdmi  using a SATA USB docking station to support the media.
Does this unit have an OS with windows media player? Is there enough RAM to play a Video, Would I need any periferal cards or devices to make this happen. If not this item what would you suggest. 
                           Thank you,
                                   Alan
                               Alan

Accepted Answer

This is a barebone system, which means it does not include the hard disk or memory. No operating system is provided.

Question 8

Any specific DVD-Rom drive needed to load Windows.  For example, will a PS2 work?

Accepted Answer

I'm assuming PS2 is referring to PlayStation2 and not the old style keyboard connector.  If the drive you are referring to connects via USB and is recognized by a desktop computer normally then its worth a try.  It must connect via usb as there is only 1 SATA connector.

I have build several of these but always with a samsung external usb DVD-rW drive.

Question 9

Does Intel furnish 64 bit graphics drivers with this unit?

Accepted Answer

Intel has not and will never release 64 bit video drivers for the windows platform.  If using Atom powered products and windows...be prepared to only use 32bit versions of windows.

64bit drivers do exist on some linux distros.

Question 10

I know that the specs page on newegg state that the memory module supports DDR3 800. I want to know if anyone has put a faster speed in their device such as 1866 or higher? The suggestions page shows 1066. I believe that its anything divisible by 4 should work but just wanted to know if someone is actually running standard 204 pin DDR3 @ any speed other than 800-Mhz? thanks.

Accepted Answer

I do not know for sure on the 1866, however I tried the 1333 and it did not work, 2 sticks in 2 foxconns. So far as i have found the only one that works is the 1066.

Questions & Answers