AOpen MP945-VXR

The AOpen MiniPC Duo MP945-VXR is a $350 bare-bones system, clearly designed to capture the pocket-size feel of the popular Mac Mini. AOpen has offered Mac Mini clones before, including full systems, such as the MP945-V, but this is the first one to harness the power of Intel's Core 2 Duo processor. The MP945-VXR was first introduced back in May 2006, but it has just been updated to include support for the popular "Merom" Core 2 Duo mobile processors. If you bought one of these bare-bones systems before now, don't worry--AOpen promises a downloadable BIOS update that will allow you to swap in a Core 2 Duo CPU.