Basic usage

Or Does The Water Get Him Instead?

In looking at a board like this, we need to consider usage scenarios. What can you do with a tiny PC? Firstly, there's the "small, low-cost desktop" scenario. Hardware enthusiasts often find themselves wondering what "home users" need quad-core processors for, given "normal things" like surfing the web only require a very low-end computer. So, how does the PX10000G cope with desktop duties? Well, let's look at web surfing first.

Youtube. See the little graph in the top right? 90% CPU usage. And that's for a pretty undemanding video - the more motion in the video, the worse the CPU consumption gets. How about our own HEXUS.tv?

The CPU graph is solid. What the screenshot doesn't show is it was playing at about three frames per second.

A reasonable question to ask is "how much does it matter, if I don't look at lots of Flash?". And really, the answer is "have you looked at the Internet lately?". Flash is everywhere. Want to read newspaper articles? Spot the multiple flash adverts. Check the latest in the US election process? Just click on the BBC's interactive Flash map. Flash is pervasive and everywhere. Could you just not install Flash? Sure - but let's not talk about just how slow the "missing plugins" bar is to appear. How about using a flash or advert blocking extension? Sure, nice idea, but you'd be nicking income from the sites you visit. In 2008, is there ever a reason to say "my new computer is too slow to visit nytimes.com"?

How about a little light gaming? The graphics chip integrated into the PX10000G has functional OpenGL support in Linux, so is it enough to play a game or two? I decided to give id Software's back catalog a go, since I had them handy. However, I didn't get enormously far - DOOM 3 onwards simply refused to run, citing lack of support for certain OpenGL extensions. Quake 3 ran, but wasn't playable - it would freeze up for about three seconds, every ten seconds or so.

Pico-ITX versus desktop computing: Pico-ITX fails.