As more and more companies introduce SFF products we’ve begun to see distinctions emerging in the various types of product offered by companies.  Companies like Shuttle, AMS, and Soltek have thus far focused mainly on enthusiasts and high-end users, IWILL’s initial XP4 (minus AGP) was introduced into the budget-SFF market, and MSI has thus far mainly released corporate / business SFF’s.   The ASUS Pundit is a system whose feature set could make it equally appealing to businesses looking for small-footprint workstations or to users looking for systems with extensive feature sets and connectivity options.

Pundit itself is an update in many ways to ASUS’ earlier Prodigy SFF, but with a better feature set and support for higher-end Pentium 4 technology.  We’ll examine exactly what this SFF packs under its hood after a look at the form factor ASUS has chosen (pictured below):

Exterior Design and Connectivity

Pundit is built using a slim, vertically-oriented design, though the system can be mounted as a standard desktop by removing the base.  The system dimensions are small?Pundit is 91(w)x357(d)x275(h) compared to Prodigy, who’s dimensions are: 88x385x305.  With its blue LED and panel covers to hide its array of inputs, outputs, and 5.25 drive bay, Pundit is quite striking from the front, especially when mounted in its vertical position.

Here’s what the system look like with its primary access cover open and it’s various input and output ports.  If you’re looking for easy-access connectivity there’s a lot to like here:  ASUS has included plug-ins for PCMCIA cards, 4-in-1 Memory cards, SPIDF inputs and outputs, support for four-and-six pin FireWire (IEEE1394) devices, two front-mounted USB ports, and your usual headphone / microphone jacks.  In short, the Pundit offers most of what you’d typically find in the back of a computer sitting in front?and we haven’t even turned the thing around yet.

The back of Pundit doesn’t exactly disappoint either.  The ports across the top (from left to right) are another microphone jack, line out, and line in, while the black port next in line is an SVIDEO output.  A standard RCA TV-Out finishes off the top row.

Everything else is fairly self-explanatory.  Two basic PS/2 ports for keyboard and mouse are aboard, as is a parallel port, serial port, RJ-45 10/100 Ethernet support, and, (in a very nice nod to the emergence of LCDs) support for either a standard 15-pin VGA or a high-end DVI output.  The two full-size PCI slots (no AGP on this model) give ample expansion room for any other devices a user might need to use?but a modem, higher-quality sound-card, or a TV tuner are about the only peripherals we can think of that this puppy doesn’t already carry onboard. 

Exterior Design and Connectivity: Conclusion

Pundit impresses on almost every level when it comes to the system’s look and feel.  The system is attractive and its ability to orient horizontally or vertically gives it multiple configuration options in the home or office, and its well proportioned in either mode.  As for its connectivity, ASUS has wedged nearly every device imaginable into this particular system, with one of the largest arrays of front-connection options we’ve ever seen. 

There are two problems with the Pundit’s design, however.  First, as sleek as the system looks with its access panels in place, the lower (and larger) one is rather impractical for when you have anything actually connected to the front of the system.  The access panel flips back in place when not held open, which means it rests in a half-open position across the connected cables whenever anything is inserted.  It also has a tendency to fall off, which, considering the inconvenience of actually having it attached, may be a good thing.

The second inconvenience is less unique to the ASUS Pundit and more a problem with vertically mounted non-slimline CD-ROMs.  A slimline CD-ROM has a physical mechanism (like a record player) that plugs the hole in the center of the CD?a standard CD-ROM, of course, does not.  This means, however, that the Pundit doesn’t always read CD-ROMs very well when mounted in its vertical configuration.  We used an ASUS-manufactured drive in Pundit, and while the CD-ROM had the necessary clips in place to keep the CD inside the tray, we had read problems nearly 50% of the time, particularly when using burned CD’s.  Orienting Pundit horizontally solved the problem. 

Other than these two issues we were very impressed with Pundit’s sleek look, its built-in features, and its flexible configuration.

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• Pundit, Cont (0 of 2)
• Price, Conclusion (0 of 2)