Shuttle XPC SK41G Barebone

Pros: Small size, light weight PC with enough gusto for most uses.
Cons: Limited expandability and upgradeability. Stuck with proprietary motherboard, no upgrade motherboards available

I have been using PC's essentially since there were PC's. My first expensive and huge sized PC was back in the mid 1980's It had no hard drive and was slower than a slug on acid. Since that time I have installed several different PC types in home ...

Pros: Well-built, attractive, small-footprint machine.
Cons: Noisy fan, but not dealbreaker noisy.

By the time this system reached me as a hand-me-down, it was no longer barebone: It was equipped with a 1.4GHz AMD processor, 256Mb RAM, 20Gb hard drive, and DVD R/W. It had a (functional) installation of Windows XP, and a (broken) installation of Suse ...

Pros: Looks good from a distance
Cons: Fan is far noisier than they would have you believe, nasty tech support personnel

For a company that claims to have "a strong commitment to customer support", my first encounter with their tech support group has to have been just about the worst I've ever experienced in any consumer product. Their "diagnosis" of the supposed problem was unbelievably broad, and trying to elicit a clearer answer, let alone a solution, led to being told "Good Luck" and then getting hung up on. Hard to believe they will get any traction at this rate.