Wayne Stallwood wrote:

Linutops ... really they don't stack that well for price performance compared to a machine built from one of the fanless MiniITX boards unless you really need a machine quite that small.

Perhaps not, when you include VAT (apparently at 19.6%?) and delivery it comes to about £250. But with that you get the guarantee that all the hardware is compatible with Linux and you get a low power system at about 6W. The form factor appeals to me (though not entirely essential for my particular application) and the fact that it boots from a USB key will make maintenance a lot easier.

I dunno how the Georde compares to a via chip, but you get many more options for interfacing on mini-ITX and you should be able to easily put together a board, psu, case, memory and flash storage for less than the price of the Linutop. You also get the advantage of expandable ram and other niceties then.

Not being able to upgrade RAM is a slight worry, if that's true, I'll ask. The advantage of having a USB coin acceptor is that it doesn't require a separate power supply.

It's also worth considering that by buying it pre-built I'm potentially saving shipping costs on lots of separate bits. I intend on buying lots of them, and I'd rather keep it simple in this respect.

It's a shame the Zonbu comes with a subscription http://www.zonbu.com/device/

Also I don't like the way Linutop are using what is obviously xubuntu for their "Plug and Surf key" without appearing to credit Ubuntu anywhere on the website.

http://www.linutop.com/product/

On the product page under "Software"