Date: December 13th, 2002
Article by: Burt Carver (Hardware
Reviewer & Newsposter)
Product was donated by: VIA Technologies
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Conclusions And Afterthoughts
I have given this board the nickname of 'Mighty Mouse'. This board exceeded
all of my expectations. In the past, small = sacrifices especially when
it came to connectivity. The size of the board and the quality of the
integrated peripherals means this thing can go virtually anywhere. In
my opinion, this board could and should replace an entry level DVD player
and computer. This board with the ethernet could easily 'hide' in a living
room feeding audio and video to the entire house at the direction of a
remote computer.
It makes an excellent purchase for a student who wants it all but is
on a budget. The only caveat to the EPIA is that if you want 3D gaming
bliss, look elsewhere. I look forward to future EPIA products that will
hopefully incorporate either a competitive 3D chip or an AGP slot. In
the case of the M9000, the PCI slot is virtually useless because all the
connectors and peripherals are onboard.
One last gratuitous product shot of 'Mighty Mouse'
Pro's:
- Just add HD, RAM and away you go!
- Tiny and quiet.
- Connectors to rival full size boards
- Hardware MPEG for unrivaled video quality
- Digital audio output
- Full featured media replacement
Con's:
- As far as I can tell, the only real con is the fact that lots of people
are already sold out of this little sweetheart.
For all this, we award the EPIA M9000 the Tweaknews Top
Rank award.
Stay tuned... we have a special world exclusive review case in
store for this little beauty! Check back soon.
If you have any further question, please register and ask
them in our forums.
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