Deck Mini Computer

Working from home has it's perks. One of which I am looking forward to as summer approaches is working outdoors on my deck. I do most of my work on my HP Laptop computer. However while working I like to have a second computer going to use for communicating with coworkers. Typically I have Skype, and Ventrilo open for both voice and text communicating. Not wanting to drag a larger computer and monitor out to the deck daily I put together this compact yet efficient package.

The computer was built in a M350 enclosure with a Pico psu80 power supply from mini-box.com.   The motherboard is an Intel D510MO with an embedded Atom D510 1.66 Ghz dual core processor with 4 GB Ram and a Patriot 32 GB Solid State Drive .

The monitor is a 7" Lilliput usb monitor from ThinkGeek. 

My initial thoughts were that the monitor might be too small to be useful. After using it on the desktop for several weeks as a secondary monitor I was convinced that it would work out fine in this application.So I set it up as the primary monitor on the mini computer.

The system is extremely fast running Windows 7 home premium 64 bit.  Now I wait for the weather to warm a bit so I can work from the deck.

Another Compact Computer

My love of building small form factor (compact) computers continues. For several weeks I've been staring at a Pentium Dual Core 1.8 Ghz CPU sitting on the desk. This CPU was removed from another computer I upgraded. Having an urge to build another computer I set out to gather parts to use to recycle this CPU. Having a spare Ark P1PH1 itx case I wanted to use I set out to look for a motherboard that would support the CPU on hand.
My research revealed that Socket 775 mini-itx motherboards are extremely over priced. Fortunately I found one reasonably priced board from Zotac. The Zotac NF610I-K-E would fit well in the Ark case and prove to be a good platform for the CPU at hand. The big brown truck delivered one a couple days later.
The build went without incident. Setting it up was about as easy as it gets. I installed 4 GB of DDR2-800 ram. Windows 7 found and installed all of the drivers. Performance was on par with the MSI G31 motherboard the processor previously ran on. Graphics seems slightly better on the Zotac board due to the onboard ION video.
The Ark case had room to spare for the motherboard and provided more than adequate cooling.
It was a good build and yielded a reasonably fast computer at minimal cost.