D.I.Y.

COMPUTERS

TINY PC TOTE

Make rubber tie-down handles for a Small Form Factor PC. By Marc H. Nathan

Small Form Factor (also known as Mini-ITX) computers religiously follow the mantra of all electronics: Smaller is Better. You might be thinking that a miniature full featured computer that has an all-in-one design is called a laptop — but that would miss the point of these well engineered specialty cases. They are technologically equal and sometimes even better than their full tower brethren, but these no-bigger-than-a-breadbox PCs are designed not only to free up precious desktop real estate, but to look good in the process.

The form factor has caused a bit of a renaissance in the DIY computer crowd who needed something more than a new chipset or hard drive interface to stay interested. This type of project is enormously fun as far as building computers

go, with all of the tight spaces and cable origami that comes with jamming full-size components into a half-size box. Recently, I was looking for my next case to turn into a PVR, when I found myself extolling the virtues of these little guys to the gathering crowd at Fry’s. When I had finished evangelizing and came up for breath, one guy decided that it would be the perfect Linux starter computer and another person bought two to start his own cluster family. Aside from their obvious street cred in the mod scene and LAN party masses, SFF cases actually make decent desktop replacements for the buttoned down 9-to- 5 Word and IE set — like mine does here. It rarely fails to bring

These rubber straps serve several purposes: handle, cable holder, and desktop protector.

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