Introducing the Space Cube

Thursday, July 3rd, 2008

I’ve been surrounded for the past few weeks by a veritable herd of tiny computers for a forthcoming Labs test – nine of them, to be precise – but I wasn’t prepared for what I was going to see when I searched for the World’s Smallest PC. I didn’t really expect anything – idle curiousity rather than genuine expectation drove me to Google – but I was delighted to stumble onto the Space Cube.

Remarkably, it’s an entire PC inside a chassis that’s 2 x 2 x 2in square. The Space Cube runs Linux and packs in a remarkable amount of hardware for such a small PC: a 300MHz processor, 64MB of SDRAM and a 16MB flash hard disk.

The ingenious design stretches to the numerous ports that are included around the case: a VGA output, USB socket – plug in a hub and you’ll be granted plenty of instant connectivity – and 100MB/s RJ45 Ethernet. There’s even a card reader and audio jacks.

The price of $325, though, is pretty elementary. A quick web surf reveals that it’s never been sold outside of Japan, and my email to the Shimafuji Corporation has, so far, fallen on deaf ears – so they’ll be no benchmark results any time soon, unfortunately.

There’s no denying that it’s a great little bit of kit, though – who needs a laptop and a bag when you can have a PC in your pocket?