

Entrepreneur: Why This Tiny Cube Might Be Your Next Office PC - Znash
http://xi3.com/news.php?id=576

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hysan
Ok found where I heard of this:
<http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1560792>

This has been around for 2-3 years now and while nice to look at, it isn't
that great. I never really understood what niche market they were trying to
target because their hardware choices aren't all that compelling. To explain:

The choice of CPUs (the only thing that you would want to upgrade since
network and power won't matter that much) is pretty sparse - Athlon 3400E,
3100, or 2000+ are your "current gen" choices. The performance of these CPUs
is comparable/worse than some of the Atoms present in nettops which cost much
less than $850. Once you factor in accessories (vesa mount is extra on the xi3
as are the keyboard/mouse - also the default SSD is pretty small @ 16GB), the
price of one xi3 is comparable to 2, maybe 3 nettops.

Over 10 years, how often would you upgrade a basic workstation computer or
HTPC (the only real use for a computer with this type of power)? Probably only
2 times. So why buy an xi3 instead of a nettop at half the cost? Presumably so
you can upgrade at a smaller cost. However you can just buy an entire new
nettop when you do decide to upgrade, which would also have a better CPU at
the time, and still manage to break even. You even get to keep the old nettop
working instead of having a useless extra CPU lying around.

Overall, the idea is interesting but the final costs simply don't make sense
for a workstation/HTPC. You would need to do CPU upgrades > 2-3 times in 10
years to beat the cost of just buying a nettop.

The one thing they do have going for them is the Z3RO Module (you need to pay
for the software to run this as well @$100) but this too isn't a great
solution. One of these will let you use one xi3 for 4 people at roughly the
same cost as 3 nettops (a bit over but not enough to get 4). This seems to be
a good price if you don't need much computing power to run your software
(remember, this is about the same power as an Atom so it is fairly weak
already). If you get another module to double to 8, the price will seem even
better but what can be run by the users will be severely limited as they are
all sharing a single computer.

A better solution than this would be to forgo the hard drives in your nettops
to cut cost and instead use them as thin clients. You get more computing power
and can still scale at a somewhat reasonable cost compared to the xi3 + Z3RO
Module. Or, you can just go with cheap laptops (portable, same power, prices
are dirt cheap for low end ones, and they come with OEM licenses for Windows,
and don't require monitors) and beat out the xi3 + Z3RO Module completely.

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read_wharf
"Each Xi3 device is made up of three separate modules: one for the processor,
one for how the unit communicates on a network and a third for power. This
means you can upgrade any of these components -- say, to swap out for a faster
processor -- with little effort. Just unscrew the back panel, slide out the
required part, put the hatch back on and you're done."

As long as Xi3 still exists. Once they die, you own a cool historical
curiosity.

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gallerytungsten
What OS does this run? The article doesn't say, and after visiting the
company's site, the answer wasn't revealed after clicking around several
different pages. Annoying, and an unfortunate marker of hype over facts.

