Ya know shuttles are crap!

I've built a shuttle and I've built a silverstone box with a mATX both with
all the goodies and I would never buy another Shuttle. The options you get
with other boxes make the difference.
The shuttle I built 3 years ago has had a power supply go out(high $ and
took 10 days to get), and now the motherboard video bus on the motherboard
is bad and I have to scrap the whole barebone system. Looks great but a
bunch of junk.

If you want a nice small form factor machine, buy a small box and off the
shelf components.
Just my thoughts and experience. I could be wrong but I don't think so.

 

Its all about perspective

I've been running 2 Shuttles for 5 years now, under excruciating conditions at times (carried 1 in hand luggage overseas, powered the other on a square-wave 12V inverter for months and we've been living in the tropics for over 3 years with no aircon - with both running 24/7 most of the time) and both are still running fine.

All the problems I've had are either MY fault:
clean out fans more regularly, use current drivers and don't let kids plug things in,
OR faulty components: 2 DVD burners and an AGP card so far.
A re-install every couple of years is inevitable.

I don't need over-textured games in HD (this cycle of need will never end for some)... just movies and documents (and up-time).

The small form factor (with excellent heatsink), full feature set and expandability easily compensate for the risk of proprietary replacement parts IMO - otherwise just buy a "standard sized" box from anywhere and see how you go. If you have no tech skills then get personal with a local store that can provide support with a minimum of transport.

No hardware vendor is (has or will be) perfect and computer technology moves too fast to achieve ubiquity (and the perfect stability that comes with that), but Shuttle systems get so many things right they shouldn't be ignored - just pick a model to suit your needs.

I'll definitely get another when the need arises, and I'll be hoping Shuttle haven't dropped the ball yet. But it's all part of the fun of consumerism.

Cheers,

Rik

 

shuttle wasn't bad at all, we used to use them as dt's in a chain of dry cleaners