A company that specializes in miniature PCs has unveiled its smallest yet, measuring 4-by-4.5-by-1.05 inches.
CompuLab's Fit-PC2i runs Windows 7 and packs an Intel Atom Z5xx processor (1.1 GHz to 2 GHz), up to 2 GB of RAM, a bay for an internal 2.5-inch SATA hard drive and an optional 4 GB flash drive. Those are essentially netbook specs, which is not bad for such a tiny machine. The externals may surprise you as well: There are four USB ports, a miniSD socket, line out/in, 5.1 S/PDIF and DVI output up to 1920x1200 resolution.
The whole package is encased in aluminum and weighs 13 ounces. It's also quite light on power consumption, sipping a mere 8 watts at full load.
CompuLab claims that its latest is the "smallest, most power efficient PC available on the market." That's a bold statement, and one that CompuLab has made before with its previous, slightly larger models. At one point, a challenger might've been OQO's Windows XP-powered Model 01+, which measured 4.9-by-0.9-by-3.4 inches, totaling less cubic feet than CompuLab's machine. However, OQO went belly-up earlier this year, so its products are technically no longer on the market.
You could also count smartphones, such as the iPhone or Nokia N900, as personal computers in a sense, but I don't think that's fair. The real winner in this race could actually be picotux, a Linux machine that's barely larger than an RJ45 connector. The point is that it's tough to claim "world's smallest PC" because there are too many qualifiers.
But is the Fit-PC2i the smallest computer running Windows 7? That's probably a safe bet, for now. Unfortunately, there's no word on pricing, and release is scheduled for January, so technically CompuLab's latest entrant can't take the prize just yet.
