Intel Ships its First Open-Source $199 PC

[exfileme]

The MinnowBoard is now available.

Intel Ships its First Open-Source $199 PC : Read more

 

[WithoutWeakness]

This is a cool little board, though I think the price is a bit high compared to RPi (likely it's biggest competitor). The inclusion of a SATA port and gigabit ethernet are definitely solid features to have and building a board like this around an x86 chip should shake the market up a bit.

 

[slomo4sho]

I would like to see the performance of this board compared to the Raspberry Pi.

 

[cRACKmONKEY421]

I'd like to see how this $200 1ghz atom based board compares with the $200 1.7ghz atom based netbook I bought three years ago. Maybe someone will do something cooler with this thing though. I guess it's all about the "experimenter" features.

 

[Old_Fogie_Late_Bloomer]

Can I run Haiku on this?

 

[whimseh]

A BIT heftier? That price isn't even in the ballpark.

 

[The_Trutherizer]

The price is high simply because of the fact that it is an SoC. This chip probably costs Intel less than $10 a pop to manufacture. And after an extremely toned down motherboard the rest of the price can only be development costs and then profit. I feel this is way overpriced. I suppose there is a bit of risk for them since they cannot just sell a ton of SoCs to a supercomputer building company for 50c a pop to recoup costs if the board does not sell.

It's nifty don't get me wrong, but it really is just a bit overpriced.

 

[Steveymoo]

I doubt SATA 2, and 10GB ethernet are really necessary, since a 1GHz atom will not really be up to the task of maxing them out.

 

[cypeq]

I doubt SATA 2, and 10GB ethernet are really necessary, since a 1GHz atom will not really be up to the task of maxing them out.

not as DB Server but as filisharing device why not ? and it's 1GB ethernet.

 

[mynith]

You can have an APU for that money. Ok, yes, the gpio-pins are neat, and it is quite tiny which is great, but it doesn't have to be this expensive, considering the performance. In fact, if I wanted a really small x86 board, I'd see what VIA has on offer first.

 

[jemm]

That´s a great new for the open-source hardware community.

 

[McGirk242]

Personally, I would have liked to have seen an Intel Atom Z2560 as the main chip. Might see it a few models down the line, but until it has a chip that can actually do something, I think I just might pass. I speak from experience Intel Atom N455 CPU, 1GB of RAM, only 512MB effective. Hopefully, this is much better.

 

[Steveymoo]

I doubt SATA 2, and 10GB ethernet are really necessary, since a 1GHz atom will not really be up to the task of maxing them out.

not as DB Server but as filisharing device why not ? and it's 1GB ethernet.

Don't get me wrong, this would function fine as a pure NAS server, but would be all but useless for streaming media, or browsing the internets. If it's meant to compete with RP as a coding toy for kids, then yeah, I get that - But the price just doesn't make a lot of sense. Might as well buy a RP, and use that as a NAS if that's what you want.

 

[metalfist54]

$200 is too high of a pricepoint in my opinion - and I think sales will probably suffer because of that. If I want a very inexpensive computer to tool around with I'll buy a rpie, if I want something a little more productive I'll get a $250 chromebook. I can't see myself purchasing at this price.

 

[amk-aka-Phantom]

$200 for an old Atom and DDR2? Do they realize it's cheaper to get an Ivy Bridge Pentium, an LGA 1155 board and some good Corsair DDR3 RAM??? It'll turn out to be WAY more flexible and powerful! Buying this is a huge waste of money!

 

[cypeq]

$200 for an old Atom and DDR2? Do they realize it's cheaper to get an Ivy Bridge Pentium, an LGA 1155 board and some good Corsair DDR3 RAM??? It'll turn out to be WAY more flexible and powerful! Buying this is a huge waste of money!

If you don't know what it is why do you even comment ?
Hint: It's not Desktop PC.