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Date: June 15th, 2010
Article by: Jackie Mueller (Hardware Reviewer)
Edited By: Nathan Glentworth (Owner / Head Editor)
Product was submitted by: VIA
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PRODUCT INSTALLATION AND TESTING

The installation guide features the character “Mr. Green” that walks you through the setup process. It's a nice change from the dry material typically included with similar products, but the instructions only cover hardware installation and no information on the motherboard is provided.

With the top cover gone, we can get a look at the tiny Nano-ITX motherboard inside. The CF card slot is on the underside of the board. It took me a bit of time to find it since the instructions didn't have any information on it.

The SODIMM installation process is identical to installing memory inside a laptop. Just insert it at an angle and press it down until it clicks into place.

Hard drives are installed by popping off the front cover (via four tabs) and inserting them through the front of the unit. Up to two 2TB drives can be installed.

With memory and a hard drive now installed, the next step is to load the OS. It would've been nice to have some documentation on the motherboard and BIOS, because I wasn't sure if I could boot only from the CF card slot or if the BIOS would allow booting from a USB drive.

A quick check of the BIOS confirmed that booting from a USB drive is possible, so I copied a Windows XP installation to my flash drive and loaded the OS that way. You can also boot from the CF card slot, USB CDROM, USB floppy and LAN, to name a few.