August 18, 2008 - Viglen MPC-L. Well worth £79.
In a recent episode of the Ubuntu UK Podcast we reviewed then gave away a mini-PC from Viglen, the MPC-L. We also told you how could get hold of the units for just under £80, which is significantly less than the advertised price. I’m not going to tell you how, if you want to know you’ll have to listen to the show. 
Anyway, I ordered one about a week and a half ago and it turned up today. First impressions? Well, Viglen probably aren’t going to be winning any rewards for environmental packaging any time soon. The unit is almost exactly the same width and depth as a CD case, but was shipped in a standard size PC box. I presume this is largely because they included a keyboard, but the amount of empty space and air pocket packaging showed that the space was not being effeciently used. Spot the 50p on the top of the box (and the actual unit below) for scale.
On top of the box was a black Viglen-branded USB keyboard and a Microsoft-branded USB optiocal mouse. This mouse feels like it’s the cheaper end of the Microsoft USB optical mouse range, but at the price there’s no reason to complain.
See what I mean about the packaging? Inside the small white box is the bubble-wrapped MPC-L unit, along with a laptop-style PSU. Oh, and unlike the review unit there was an instruction sheet giving the default username and password. 
The specification sheet enclosed in the box lists 512MB RAM, 80GB HDD (not the standard 40GB) and 12 months on-site maintenance, 7 day response. And a “Xubuntu Operating System pre-installed.” All for £79. Yey!
Although I’d seen, even dismantled, the review unit having one of my own is quite pleasing really. The unit is so physically small that it lends itself to all sorts of cool ideas. Indeed we had lots of interesting suggestions as answers to the competition. I’m going to try and run it as a MythTV front end just to see if it can cope with it, but other devious thoughts have already formed in my mind. I’m quite tempted to buy a second one.
So if you haven’t ordered one yet, download the show and find out how to order yours. Any geek worth his or her salt will find something interesting to do with this little box! Now I have to go and turn it on…
Hi, Can you do a update post on how you get on with the MythTV front end, i’m looking at running something like this in each of my rooms and this seems the ideal price.
Thanks,
Andy
Comment by Andy — August 19, 2008 @ 8:15 am
[...] wont repeat what Tony said in his two blog posts, but try to add to them. Read his [...]
Pingback by Alan Pope: Playing With The Viglen MPC-L | Christian eBuddy Blog — August 24, 2008 @ 2:40 pm
Choosing the media server…
The decision of which media server to go with has easily been the longest and most agonising while putting together new audio solution at home. I’m not the only one at work having recently been looki……
Trackback by Graham White: My Notes — August 28, 2008 @ 7:03 am
I’m about to order mine.. bringing it home to Australia after a quick visit to the UK. I have big plans for it. It’s going to be a mini hypervisor for UML instances, which will be a LAMP server, svn server, ipcop, and nas backup server by plugging an external usb hdd into it. I might have to get a bit more ram for it though..
Comment by John Hunt — August 29, 2008 @ 2:27 am
Ordered one last month and it arrived recently. Decided to wipe linux off the hard drive and installed Windows 2000. After finding the correct Video and Audio drivers managed to get it working perfectly. However, it is VERY VERY SLOW. It’s okay for browsing text based web pages but too slow for even low resolution ‘you tube’ videos. I was hoping to use it for playing DVD’s through a USB DVD/CD drive but too slow for that as well with video’s stalling and breaking up. Oh well, on the plus side, it only uses 10 Watts of electricity when working ‘hard’ so I can leave it running 24/7 without worrying about the electricity bill.
Comment by Mark — September 20, 2008 @ 12:00 am
You have had your unit for a while now, what do you think of it now?
Comment by Adam — September 24, 2008 @ 10:17 pm