Synonymous with the barebones market, Shuttle has carved a niche by providing enthusiasts exactly what they crave, but in mini form factored systems.

The XPC SS51G is the cheapest of the Shuttle offerings this month. Again, the ease of hardware installation makes this product fantastically user friendly, given the ability to just pop out the optical storage bay, insert your drive and floppy and whack it back in. No mess, no fuss.

Swiping the hardware from the PC Authority test bench, we went about putting together our Shuttle XPC. Immediately we were confronted by one of the idiosyncrasies of small form factor PCs: squeezing all the hardware in the tiny space inside.