For my report on the state of play for Small Form Factor (SFF) PC systems at CeBit, I decided to tell you about the new or really exciting products, rather than to cover absolutely everything that was on show there. This is because a lot of SFF products on show, had already been seen and reported on, in my ‘SFF At Computex: SFF’s of the Past, Present, And Future’ article back in September last year. In that report I noted that due to the obvious explosion of products seen there, the SFF market had become mainstream...

At this show, I wasn’t too sure what to expect. Certainly, I already knew about some of the products I would see for the first time. Was there anything that I was ‘blown away’ by? Did I see anything that came as a total surprise? Read on and all will be revealed.....

ACorp

ACorp had a few surprises up their sleeve - a new series of barebones, most of which offer multimedia playback via the BIOS.  This BIOS playback is based on the Elegent ‘ETBIOS’ - which was the World’s first multimedia playback BIOS extension.

The range comprises of:

Activa - Which comes in Intel 865G + ICH 5 and SiS661FX + 963 chipset flavors.
Access - These offer the same chipset choices as the Activa, but feature different styling.
Both these ranges come in a variety of models, each with extra features. For instance some models offer DVD, CD & MP3 playback from the BIOS, but also have TV tuner & PVR functionality built in..

ACorp’s new machines are sturdily built, with good styling and design features. The ETBIOS based playback is one of the best looking around.

AOpen

AOpen hit that market last year with their rather nice XCcube - which proved to be a range of well designed and rather quiet barebones. Following on from that we have some new variants, some which are restyles and some which offer additional features, or both. Their new systems offer a 220W PSU, which sits in the mid ground - most systems have at least 200W and some have 250w.

The surprise on their stand was their ‘Silensea’ perspex case. This features all the usual XCcube design features, in a really well designed clear perspex case.
Nice features were the see through PSU, well designed front button assembly and supremely tidy internal wiring.

Most clear perspex cases tend to look rather untidy, but due to Aopen’s attention to detail, this case really shows how it can be done properly!

Following on from some other their less esoteric SFF designs was the rather un-inspiringly named ‘A4 book’ - this system wouldn’t look out of place under the TV and has an in vogue mirror finish on the front and stealthed front drive bays..
With the Intel 865 chipset, (with support for upto a 3.6GHz Prescott CPU), Gig networking, SATA, card reader and mini-pci round off this attractive package. Again, Aopens attention to tidiness and build quality was apparent.

Mapower & Saintsong

Mapower

Mapower arrived on the SFF scene late last year when they debuted what they claimed to be 'the Worlds smallest mini-iTX PC', the S3000 - this was basically a VIA EPIA motherboard in a revised external HD enclosure. In my opinion, the original one on show at Computex last year, was cheap and tacky.

At CeBit they had the productionised version on show, which had a much nicer finish. They do different versions of this, each providing different functionality.

They also had on show a few prototype Nano-iTX systems, one painted blue (shown here) and a funky leather clad one. I personally thought that the construction was not too brilliant but it is likely to be much improved on production versions.

Saintsong

Known for some of the World's smallest P4 systems, Saintsong's slightly larger system called the 'Boxer' caught my eye. Although it featues support for the almost obsolete socket 370 CPU's, it does offer dual 10/100 networking. This would make an ideal Internet router.

OK, so it's no serious competition for any of the leading SFF products, but it's fully featured and cheap.

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• Biostar and Bona (1 of 11)
• Chaintech and CF (2 of 11)
• DFI & Digital Logic (3 of 11)
• ECS & FIC (4 of 11)
• Gigabyte & Hoojum (5 of 11)
• Iwill & Jetway (6 of 11)
• Mapower & Saintsong (7 of 11)
• SilverStone & Scythe (8 of 11)
• Soltek & Shuttle (9 of 11)
• Uneeq & VIA (10 of 11)
• Summary (11 of 11)