It all started with the idea of an ultra low cost PC for education use in third world countries. Then Asus took the basis of that idea, and evolved into the Eee PC -- a small, low cost laptops for mainstream consumers. The netbook craze begins to take off. After that, Intel decided that they needed to make a processor for this very purpose in order to take advantage of this rapidly growing segment. The Intel Atom was born. Then the netbook market exploded. Welcome to 2009, a year where many low cost computing solutions came into this world, thanks to the Intel Atom CPU. From the original netbooks, nettops were born; a term to describe low cost desktop computers as juxtaposed to its laptop counterparts. The Atom processor even found home in network attached storage devices such as the QNAP TS-439 which we'll be reviewing next week! Interestingly, since the desktop world is all about making use of standard form factors, Mini-ITX suddenly took center stage, after development by VIA since 2001. Unsurprisingly, mITX cases also suddenly experienced a surge of demand in the market as many manufacturers jumped onto the boat, and started showcasing their own entry into this high potential segment. We took our opportunity, so what we got here today at APH Networks is, well, a mITX case (Why else do you think we took so much time to talk about it anyway? Haha). The Lian-Li PC-Q07 is a beautiful, high quality, full aluminum case from renowned chassis manufacturer... well, Lian-Li -- which you probably have guessed from the name as aforementioned anyway. And this time, it's mITX. How does it stack up in this new world of computing solutions? Read on to find out. APH Networks
