Amos bolts onto the back of the monitor

dculberson

#1 – 5:29 AM June 5, 2009

Every monitor I've owned made after 2001 or so uses the VESA mounting points to mount its base. So unless the monitors are somehow floating with no physical connection to our earthly plane, this wouldn't work with them.

Now I'm sure there are still monitors made that don't do that, but they're not as common as they used to be.

schwal

#2 – 6:03 AM June 5, 2009

Of the three flatscreens I have owned, none of them (2 Acers and a brand x) use the VESA mounts for the base. I just put an old machine in my kitchen for web browsing, the only downside is the size of the box attached to the monitor. this would be perfect for this application.

dculberson

#3 – 6:37 AM June 5, 2009

It must be a Dell habit.

Oddball

#4 – 7:03 AM June 5, 2009

DCulberson: Yeah, for some reason, Dell does that while many other manufacturers leave them open. It's hit or miss, but there are plenty of them out there.

My big question is what's new with this machine? Doesn't look all that much different from other tiny form factor PCs that can be mounted to the back of monitors. I've been deploying eee Boxes (which are a bit bigger than this thing) in this configuration at work for a few months now, and I used to work for a company that used AMD Geode based machines that were about the size of this thing a couple years ago.

Zan

#5 – 7:13 AM June 5, 2009

Of the monitors I've seen that don't use or cover the VESA points for the stand (Acers and ASUS mostly), the stand is flimsy enough that I wouldn't trust it to hold the extra weight of this computer.

(BTW, DCulberson, the four Dell monitors I use don't actually mount the stand to the VESA mount, but the proprietary snap-on mount does hide the VESA screw holes. In fact, if you remove the Dell mount, the screws needed to mount to a VESA mount are already there underneith.)

Anonymous Anonymous

#6 – 7:27 AM June 5, 2009

It's awesome. It's SO awesome. It's beyond awesome! It's BEawesome!!!!

--Rhino

dculberson

#7 – 7:31 AM June 5, 2009

Zan, right you are. I forgot about that. You've also definitely got a point with the flimsy thing - the older monitors I have that have a separate mounting point always seem right on the verge of falling over or bending their mounting point.

Oddball, I think the Amos has a slightly different target market than the eee Box. It's fanless and has that big external heatsink so it can put up with a dirtier environment. The Amos is also most certainly slower, being a 500mhz Via chip versus the eee's Atom. It's also likely to be more expensive - does anyone know pricing yet?

I am curious as to the VESA mounting specifics. According to the press release I read, it's 131mm x 135mm footprint (and 45mm high). That's significantly bigger than the 100mm VESA that most monitors I've had use. Does it use an adapter plate? Seems like they could have made it fit within the 100mm x 100mm footprint by making it a bit taller.

Joe Beitler

#8 – 8:47 AM June 5, 2009

TrixBox compatible?

O_M

#9 – 3:02 PM June 5, 2009

...Considering that most LCD monitors come in black cases, why didn't they make this black instead of chrome?

megath

#10 – 6:58 AM June 6, 2009

Why can't I find a price for this thing anywhere?

Johnson

#11 – 2:12 PM June 6, 2009

It be cool if this device have Firewire, or E-sata.

Mazoola

#12 – 9:45 PM June 6, 2009

Via-itx.com shows them as listing @ $410 w/o flash drive but is offering an advance order price of $295.

Anonymous Anonymous

#13 – 11:48 AM June 7, 2009

Unless this thing has a few Powered USB ports (the 12V & 24V types - not a normal USB 2.0 5V), it's not going to be that useful as a cash register unless you don't want to hook up any Point of Sale peripherals to it.

Cheap computers

#14 – 6:06 AM June 8, 2009

[...]Wow, grab an external Hard drive and a wireless N connector and this could be a HD connected media center!!!!!!!![....]
http://www.electrocomputerwarehouse.com

nutbastard

#15 – 1:54 PM June 8, 2009

@#9

to be fair, it's not chrome, it's just bare aluminum (which lends itself to painting a lot better than chrome would, so grab that can and brush)

nutbastard

#16 – 1:57 PM June 8, 2009

as for the VESA mounts, I dont see why they didn't do a pass-thru or daisy-chain setup where this mounts to the monitor using the VESA but also has its own, offset holes tapped for attaching the mount to the PC. It would have been TRIVIAL to add!

Mark

#17 – 6:54 AM June 9, 2009

@O_M: It's probably plain aluminum and painting it might compromise it's cooling capabilities, since the exterior is the heatsink in cooling terms
@Cheap computers: I hardly doubt the CPU's and GPU's performance allow it to be a usable Media Center

Still the device is small and might be ideal for places you won't have much space to hook up a netbook kind of desktop, like the kitchen, boat of car for all that matters.

R@ven

#18 – 12:50 PM June 9, 2009

I'll stick to the MacMini in my car :-)

Computer Repair Toronto

#19 – 5:04 PM July 5, 2009

It's really nice Computer, I couldn't find it in the market. It looks like Power supply size.
Awesome