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Desktop computers tend to be a bit more hacker-friendly than netbooks. Most have cases that are easily taken apart and expansion ports for extra hard drives, disc drives, memory, and PC cards. But nettops tend to be a bit harder to upgrade since the whole point of a nettop is to cram a low power PC into a very tiny case, leaving little room for expansion options.
But the VIA ARTiGO A1100 is a bit different. This little nettop is powered by a 1.2GHz VIA Nano processor and VX855 media processor. The system has an HDMI port and, 5 USB ports, Ethernet, 3 audio ports, and optional 802.11b/g/ WiFi and SD card reader. All those components fit into a 5.7″ x 3.9″ x 2″ case. It weighs just 1.3 pounds.
What you don’t get is a hard drive or memory. The idea is that you can add your own 2.5″ hard drive and DDR2 RAM. The ARTiGO A110 can handle Windows XP, Vista, or 7 or Linux, but it ships without an operating system.
There’s still not a lot of room for adding additional components, but the ARTiGO A1100 is designed to let you crack open the case and use the hard drive or solid state disk and memory of your choice.
You can pick one up from VIA’s online store for $243.
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Introducing the VIA ARTiGO A1100 DIY PC Kit (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xCbtmVjF7sI&feature=player_embedded#lq-lq2-hq-vhq)