Product Reviews

Tower PCs have plenty of expansion options, from drive bays for adding extra hard disks to PCI slots for adding devices such as TV tuners. But if you don't need these expansion capabilities, a compact PC such as Shuttle's mini X 100HA takes up less space and is perfectly suitable for most computing tasks.

The 100HA is whisper-quiet in operation, can be stored vertically using the included stand and is around the size of an old Nintendo games console. It's no good for playing modern 3D games such as Doom 3 or Call or Duty 2 because of its underpowered ATI Radeon Mobility X1400 graphics chip, but older games should work fine.

Shuttle has managed to squeeze in a dual-core processor, Intel's Core Duo T2050. Despite having a 553MHz instead of a 667MHz frontside bus like its slightly faster cousin, the T2300, the T2050 was only slightly slower in our video-editing test. What hampers performance is the insufficient amount of RAM. Although 512MB is fine for office work and web browsing, in a PC at this price we'd expect at least 1GB for running more than one application at a time and memory-hungry

Thankfully, adding extra RAM to the 100HA is much easier than with other compact PCs such as the Core Duo Mac mini. The two RAM slots can be accessed by removing three screws from the back of the 100HA and sliding off the top panel. Both slots are already filled, though, so you'll have to dispose of the existing 256MB chips when upgrading.

The 200GB 31/2" SATA hard disk can be easily replaced with a larger model by unscrewing the bottom panel, disconnecting the data and power cables and pulling out the disk. Although the notebook-sized slot-loading DVD writer is inaccessible, you can add an external DVD writer to one of the five USB2 ports or the FireWire 400 port. This may be necessary sooner rather than later, since the existing slot-loading DVD writer can't write to DVD-R DL discs. A handy memory card reader is present, but it doesn't support all formats; most noticeably, it can't read CompactFlash cards.

Although it's small and quiet enough to act as a media centre PC, no remote, TV tuner or copy of Windows Media Center has been provided. You can still hook up the 100HA to 5.1 surround-sound speakers as well as your TV and audio equipment thanks to the S-video and S/PDIF ports, though. WiFi is included alongside Gigabit Ethernet, so you can connect to the internet easily.

If you already have a keyboard, mouse and monitor, the mini X 100HA is an attractive alternative to a large-tower PC with its small, quiet and easily upgradable design. But if you already have a copy of Windows XP then a similarly configured, if less easily expandable, Mac mini with comparable levels of performance costs £250 less.