The Shuttle X27, which we reported on last week, is small physically. Turns out, so is the price.
Shuttle let us know Thursday that the miniscule desktop will start at $189--sans monitor, and peripherals, like all Shuttle PCs. It will be available in mid-September.
Now, $189 isn't the cheapest PC Shuttle makes. But that's the lowest price we've seen thus far in the emerging Nettop category, or small desktop PCs bearing Intel's low-power Atom processor.
The Eee Box from Asus, another Nettop, goes for $350. CherryPal, a newcomer to the space, makes a tiny desktop that keeps most data in the cloud, has a Freescale processor, and is to sell for $249.
Cheap is good, but as my colleague Rich Brown points out, is there actually a large market for these small, low-power PCs when you can get a full-fledged desktop for about the same price?
Shuttle plays to the nichiest of niche markets--people who love Linux--so that's probably not its biggest concern. But the company is clearly hoping PCs that can cut down their power usage and space, as it promises with the X27, will catch on.