Most people still buy pre-built machines, so whatever is more widely available at the retailers (tower or small form) is likely to be picked up by most people. The retailer sees less demand for the small form, and the vicious cycle continues. I guess some sort of marketing push by shuttle at PC world or something would do wonders.

Also, a lot of people don't even realise a PC can come in that size. They simply assume a PC is a bulky and hefty item, and that anything else isn't a PC. That, and towers are probably cheaper (components wise).

BTW, is that a Mesh computers tower? I had one just like it that I threw out last year for my new HTPC case.

Yeah, I wasn't aware that small form factor PCs were viable until recently either. I assumed they all had to have crappy on-board audio and graphics and had to be based around laptop parts, or something.

That's not a Mesh tower, it's one from Evesham with the front off.

Did you do a course at Glasgow Uni in HATII?

I was reading up on Ren and Stimpy on Wikipedia and there was a link to this site regarding the DVD collections, and somewhere in the back of my head a penny dropped. I remembered someone in my class talking about how they did restoration work on John Kricfalusi's finest... I wondered if it was you.

Well, if it was, small world. If it wasn't... ignore me. Keep up the good work.

-R.

Yeah Ryan, that's me! I had a feeling someone would find my site eventually. You're talking about Heritage and Cultural Informatics, right? How'd you find the exam?

Lyris; You do know that it has slightly come with the Sony Vaio's with the computer built at the back of the screen.

Just letting you know.

Hey, good point Jamie, I remember those. I guess they were Sony's take on the iMac? Which came first, I wonder...

Bigger cases allow for more flexibilty in hardware choice, which is kind of the point of a PC. Most towers are 95% air, sure, but if they weren't then they couldn't accept the near-infinite variety of hardware setups. Size reduction is easy if you have a rigid hardware platform (like a PlayStation 2), but that's the exact opposite of the reality for PCs. That said, I've no idea why the Dell crowd haven't latched onto small form factors yet, it makes perfect sense if you have no intention of ever modifying the contents of the box.

For myself, I've got a 4 HDDs (RAID array, scratch drive and storage) and two optical drives. There's no way that'd fit in any Shuttle case, it's a cramped rat's nest of wires as it is, and even if it did there'd be massive heat issues.

Yeah, you make a good point, but what I meant was that most PCs actually *are* rigid hardware platforms - a lot of home users will never upgrade them and will buy a whole new machine when it gets out of date.

Agreed; though this "disposable PC" mentality is completely opposite to my personal approach, I accept it is nevertheless the standard. You can't expect everyone to be technical, or even want to be technical. I don't really know what's under the hood of a car, for instance, so I'm not one to criticise.

It's worth noting that many PC manufacturers have tried small form-factor PCs in the pretty distant past, back when heat issues were non-existent. There were many ISA-era PCs (386, 486, that sort of thing) from manufacturers like Compaq and RM which were in tiny enclosures. At the time I'm pretty sure they were shunned, and if they were it would've been due to the last days of a computer-literate majority not buying them due to lack of flexibility. I suppose the market demand for reasonably-future-proof computers isn't what it was.

The Mac Mini addresses this quite well, thinking about it.