ARTiGO kit on video

If you want to get a better picture of the ARTiGO kit and what it's like to build a system with one, check out this video on PCPer.com. If you Google ARTiGO A110 you'll find quite a few options of where you can get them in Australia.

VIA ARTiGO A110: A DIY delight

The US site, Maximum PC, has reviewed the relatively new VIA ARTiGO A110 barebone PC. Like all of these embedded computing products, it's fantastic if you understand what it's good for and use it for that; dissapointing if you don't bother to understand its design point and try and do something silly like play a game on it. Productivity center - yep. Media center - nope. Media streamer - yep. Gaming PC - nope.

VIA ARTiGO A110 intro video

Last week VIA announced a new ARTiGO kit, this time aimed at ... well, all sorts really, including PC enthusiasts who might like to build themselves a teeny tiny PC. The ARTiGO A110 kit is available for "retail" online sale in the US. I've been told that it will be available in Australia via the usual channels, by the end of the month.
There's nothing all that new being explained in this video, but it does give you a good look at the quality of the case - and it does look very solid and well finished.

New VIA ARTiGO targets consumers

The latest VIA ARTiGO system, just launched by VIA, is targetting regular consumers and enthusiasts. Previous VIA ARTiGO designs were aimed for use as servers. The ARTiGO A1100 would also be perfect for that but the new configuration also aims to appeal to general desktop use as well.
The new white chassis is pretty spiffy looking, complete with a little swirly design. It looks just as cute as the first ARTiGO but the white color is somehow more friendly than the black. The measurements are 14.5 x 10 x 5 cm and that makes it the smallest full featured PC kit available. It is full featured, with a 1.2GHz VIA Nano 64-bit processor and the VX855 digital media chipset which gives it HD playback support. Being so small, it doesn't have room for an optical drive but you could always plug in a USB optical drive.

As a media box for the lounge room, that compliments a DVD/Blu-ray player, and is responsible for playing DivX, AVI and other media file types, the ARTiGO A110 is really pretty awesome. The etail price, for US residents only, is USD 243. It has HDMI and VGA out (and audio of course). That's not a bad deal, especially when you look at how much space it would take up ... or more to the point, how much space it wouldn't take up. Having the audio ports on the front and the VGA and HDMI on the back is not ideal though as there would be no way to avoid having cables sticking out the front of it.

As a desktop PC it's also a very sweat deal. It would take up less room on a desk than you're average phone!! The specs are also more than capable of most people's working requirements.

The Press Release says that it supports Windows 7, Vista and XP but the product page on VIA's site omits Vista. Not sure what the deal is there but my guess is that it's on oversight on the website.

Sadly, no online sales place is listed for Australia. Mini-ITX.com do ship internationally though. You can also try and win one in VIA's ARTiGO A110 simile game. The competition is open until next Thursday 29th. The idea behind the comp is that people submit images of things that the ARTiGO A110's size reminds them of and then people vote for their favorite. My tip would be to go for something funny.