This is the first time I buy a "barebones" and I must say I was impressed. From the point of regret assembled PC "classic" for the post office my wife.
Indeed it is quite comparable to a CPU "celeron" despite its modest size 20x20x6cm, including support. Support precisely that secures the PC on the VESA mounting standard available in the back of any flat panel display (or as in my case a TV screen). Good surprise elsewhere, hardware is also provided. It must be said that in terms of accessories, the box is busy: apart central unity, support and attached hardware, there is also an antenna for WiFi, the external power supply, a DVI-VGA adapter and a USB infrared receiver and its associated remote. It is the only element a little "chip" of the assembly. The manufacturer probably could spend a few euros more to give us a little more polished model. Indeed, on mine, the batteries were not good contact, which caused untimely malfunction. I fixed the problem by distorting a bit these contacts with fine forceps ... which was not that easy because access is not easy and the metal of which it is formed is surprisingly resistant to deformation!
To represent an operating CPU, you will additionally add an HDMI cable, RAM (SW DIMM format) and a hard drive 3 1/2 "or more likely an SSD that will make no noise. In this respect The Zotac is quite silent. By cutting off the TV sound, we perceive just the fan noise under heavy use. But in practice, in normal use, the "background noise" from the speakers of the TV is more important than the Zotac!
From a software perspective, the Zotac comes with a driver CD for Windows. As I installed Linux Debian Wheezy above, this CD I've been useful (note: no Windows installation CD or Windows license with the PC). And as there is no integrated optical drive, you will need to either connect an external USB drive (which I have not tested), or as in my case, to install the operating system from a USB key. With a standard installation of Debian, you should install drivers "Not Free" to use the Ethernet and Wi-Fi cards This last point is the one who asked me the most problems. Indeed, for a connection reliable I have disable the Wireless-N ("iwlwifi options 11n_disable = 1"). But it's not too much of a problem in my case, since 54MBits / s Wi-Fi 802.11g than enough for watching DVD quality videos. Still on the Wi-Fi antenna is proving surprisingly sensitive to its orientation. At the vertical or 45 °, the Wi-Fi signal is loud and clear. Horizontally, it literally collapses ... As I did not have the utility, I have not tested the Bluetooth (but it is recognized by the kernel).
As I said, I served in HTPC. So I installed XBMC Eden above (this is the version available in the Debian package). No difficulty of operation. By cons I let one processor to decompress because the VDPAU acceleration XBMC seems to crash. Again this is not an obstacle given the relative power of the beast (4389.76 BogoMIPS in total for the 2 hearts in practice while playing a video, one heart at about 80%, the other 0%). Always with XBMC Eden, the main buttons on the remote are recognized as standard. The other (red-green-blue-yellow accents, including subtitles) need to change some configuration.
In the end, it was my first "barebones" and I'm not disappointed at all by this purchase ... that I do not also hesitate to advise all around me: good CPU running Linux virtually "out-of-the-box" and minimum bulk. It's almost a shame not to do a media-center!
