I read the Gear Diary review of the VIA Artigo and must say that I am getting interested. With dimensions of 5.9″ x 1.8″ x 4.3″, the VIA Artigo is tiny. The VIA C7 CPU and onboard graphics won’t exactly give you Crysis, but then that is not what a system like this is about. This is for when you need a discreet system without the bells and whistles. While it can be used as a standalone system, this thing is built for embedding. It looks perfect for offloading some of your system’s simpler tasks so that you can enjoy a few performance gains.

What this system lacks is expandability. If I were embedding, I would want a second LAN port, which some of the other small (but not Pico) motherboards in the VIA range have. A second LAN port would allow you to use it as a wired Internet gateway. Snap the right wireless A/B/G/N and you have an Access Point with a bit of juice.

The price is right at $279, I wouldn’t buy the VIA Artigo, but I would buy something very close to it. You do need to sacrifice some expandability for that tiny form factor. I, however, would prefer a slightly larger motherboard that I could still mount in a CD slot, the HDDs can be wired up from elsewhere to make a bit more room for a PCI slot. Lower performance would eliminate the need for a fan which would also save a bit of room and give you a more functional embedded device, but less useful standalone system.

Sources: Logic Supply, Gear Diary

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