Star Review: A9home vs. Koolu
Linked by Thom Holwerda on Tue 16th Oct 2007 20:39 UTC, submitted by teigetje
Talk, Rumors, X Versus Y Drobe pitches the A9Home against the Koolu Net Appliance. "The A9home has won the hearts of some RISC OS users, but how does it fare in the big bad world of embedded and small-form factor computing? David Llewellyn-Jones pits his Advantage Six A9home against the Koolu Net Appliance to find out."
E-mail Print r 0   3 Comment(s) http://osne.ws/ehl
Permalink for comment 279165
To read all comments associated with this story, please click here.
Zonbu, definitely
by moxfyre on Thu 18th Oct 2007 18:38 UTC
moxfyre
Member since:
2007-10-18

I'd say the Zonbu wins, hands down. The Fit-PC is close.

Here are the advantages for Zonbu:

* more expandibility (CF, IDE, mini-PCI for wireless, 6 USB ports vs. 2, internally accessible RS-232 ports)
* faster processor (VIA 1.2ghz vs. AMD Geode 500mhz)
* more RAM (512mb vs 256)
* S-Video TV-out
* ~12% cheaper ($250 vs. $285)

While the Fit-PC has a few slight advantages:

* two Ethernet adapters vs. one for the Zonbu
* exposed RS-232 serial port
* slightly lower power consumption (5 W vs 10 W typically)
* 40gb HD versus 4gb CompactFlash for Zonbu

I also feel that the Zonbu is nicer-looking than the Fit-PC. The Fit-PC might have an edge if you want to build a custom router... Zonbu seems to win hands down for a living room PC or most other uses.

There's a pretty nice walk-through dissection of the Zonbu internals here, showing all the ports: http://gallery.zonbulive.net/main.php?g2_itemId=62

Reply Bookmark Score: 1