Hardware Zotac Zbox ID89 Plus Review

Zotac crams an Ivy Bridge CPU into its latest mini-PC. Is it the perfect media companion?
http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/pcs/2013/05/08/zotac-zbox-id89-plus-review/1

 

£50 cheaper than a mac mini, but it doesn't come with an OS. And what is the official price of the latest version of windows these days? £130 for windows 7 and £100 for an upgrade to windows 8.

So with the 'out of date' (LOL) windows 7 it's more expensive than a Mac and with windows 8 it's a LOT more expensive than a Mac.

Yes I know you could install an OEM version of 8 for £70 but you're not supposed to.

Microsoft really need to sort out their pricing.

 

Or you install Ubuntu, and don't have to deal with licencing costs.

 

What?

You are SUPPOSE to, yes.
http://www.microsoft.com/oem/en/lic...es/personal-use-license.aspx#fbid=PMVchXR4bIJ

Windows 8 is cheaper than Windows 7. What price sorting is needed?

 

yes windows 8 has no retail version, so you have the choice of oem/system builder or upgrade, so therefore on a machine with no os, if you go the windows 8 route you MUST use the oem/system builder edition not the upgrade edition.

 

And yes you can transfer the Win8 OEM license to another computer, as it's under personal use.
In other words, it's like the RETAIL license of Win7, but OEM price, (so no support), as mentioned on the link I posted before.

So what's not to like?

 

I'd really like to see what Zotac would do with AMD's APUs.

Sadly they've stayed away from anything above the extreme low end there. My friend (computer tech) is quite happy with his E-450 based ZBox media center unit but I'd like a little more power.

 

Microsoft (Including the link you posted) says the OEM edition can be used "If you are building a computer".

You'll notice that the phrase "If you are building a computer" is not the same as "You are buying a computer without an operating system".

MS don't elaborate on the term 'build' but I would wager they originally meant building a computer from component parts, or buying a bare bones package and installing your own CPU, SSD & RAM.

Will you get intro trouble installing an OEM edition? No.

Is MS's terms well worded? No.

Could they invalidate your activation if they played the pedantic card? Probably.

 

Windows 7 was available in retail form for about £80 for a LONG time. I think I paid £77.

Windows 8 upgrade is £99 RRP.

£99 > £80

Okay okay, windows 7 is more expensive now than it used to be and yes it's possible to get windows 8 upgrades for less than full retail.

Basically OEM editions of 7 & 8 are priced equally. 8 isn't cheaper.

OSX Lion on the other hand was £21 as a single price for all your macs, and for me brought enough benefits to make it worth the upgrade price. There was a few 'pros' in upgrading and no 'cons'.

Compare this to windows 8. I certainly didn't see any benefit in upgrading my win7 rig to 8 as the 'cons' outweighed the 'pros' and technically (according to the licensing) if I wanted to keep my win 7 install I'd need to purchase the OEM edition.

Windows 8 is more expensive than OSX. End. Of.

 

Windows 7 Ultimate edition is: 189.99$
Windows 8 Professional edition is: 139.99$

1- OSX is essentially a skin over UNIX compared to Windows
2- The price of the OS is included in your Mac. We will talk when OS 11 finally comes out.
3- OSX updates are service packs equivalent of Windows, with 1-2 superficial in most cases, features, just to say something is new. Plus OSX doesn't have weakly security and bug fix updates/ You want big patched -> Wait and buy the new Mac OS.

You fail to do a comparison table. Also, yes, you won't be able to use your Win7 license an another computer, which you will most likely not do in any case.

MacOS is more expensive than Linux. End. Of.

 

[snip]
ARGHpple NEVER!

 

Don't you hate it when mum and dad fight?

 

Uh...OS to OS X? Remember that? Also remember how godawful Mac OS was? Luckily for Apple, they brought Jobs back just in time to use NeXT as the BSD-derived base for OS X. Apple left to its own devices couldn't do OS for crap - they got saved by NeXT's engineers.

No...what they're better at is denying problems exist and then very quietly patching them weeks and weeks later. And I'm going to need some source on the second clause of that second sentence, because that comes off as pure RDF kool-aid.

(Also, to be fair, MS patches monthly unless it's seriously bad news, in which case they'll shove out an out-of-band update as soon as they get it stable.)

Anyway, the argument is silly - are you in the Apple ecosystem? No? Then you likely won't start with looking at this and buying a Mac Mini. If you are, you're not looking at this anyway.

Also, starting with Win8, you now have the official blessing to use the OEM license on a PC like this - everyone's been doing it anyway, so MS wised up and finally flattened out the licensing model somewhat.

 

Why are you comparing 7 Ultimate and 8 Professional? Compare 7 Professional to 8 Professional at least.

 

Because Windows 8 Professional, is the highest edition of, well, Windows 8. You have all the Ultimate features of Windows 7, inside it.

 

I may be late to the party, but XKCD strikes again.

I seem to recall that the actual license cost of OS X is included in your purchase of Mac hardware. The cost of each successive upgrade is essentially that: a charge for a service pack. I am not suggesting that new updates to OS X should be free, and I'm really not going to get into a discussion around what constitutes a "service pack", an update, a "new" version of an OS or even a "new" OS.

My point is the licensing model. This model works just fine because, in theory, there's no way you can install OS X on anything other than a Mac. Apple can basically charge as much or as little as they want for each successive version of OS X because you have to buy their hardware to run it in the first place. This is why each version of OS X is only supposed to be run on "Apple-branded hardware".

Surely Windows Service packs and Windows Updates do this?

Microsoft tried that and it didn't seem to work out too well for them

I was mighty irritated that my 2006 Macbook Pro wouldn't run anything past 10.6. I understand perfectly why this is - 10.7 and above uses 64-bit UEFI only, which isn't supported on my hardware - but it did effectively stop a perfectly functional piece of hardware from getting the latest software. A piece of hardware which had no problems with Windows 8, I might add.

FWIW every time you change something about your product you are forcing change upon someone unless you give them an option to do things in different ways. I quibble over semantics here as I suspect that you refer more to the Modern UI in Win8, but see my previous point: dropping support for 32 bit did force a change on people, specifically developers.

See my response to point 3; when they "periodically clean out the crap" they remove compatibility layers for users of older hardware. I've mentioned this three times so far so it's worth pointing out that I'm really not bent out of shape about it; OS X 10.6 was perfectly fine for my needs, and it's not as if I don't know how to dual-boot Windows or Linux.

Your honour, I submit exhibit A for the consideration of the court: the OS X version numbers:

OS X Server 1.0 - Hera
Public Beta - Kodiak
OS X 10.0 - Cheetah
OS X 10.1 - Puma
OS X 10.2 - Jaguar
OS X 10.3 - Panther
OS X 10.4 - Tiger
OS X 10.5 - Leopard
OS X 10.6 - Snow Leopard
OS X 10.7 - Lion
OS X 10.8 - Mountain Lion



I know, I'm splitting hairs again. I take the point about different versions of Win7 & Win8, but in response to that I'd argue that the people who would have difficulty with knowing (or being able to find out) the differences between each version would not be the ones deciding which verison they get: Joe & Jane Bloggs buying a computer in a store will be getting "advice" from salespeople about which version is the best for them based on what they will want to use it for. An average home user isn't going to need or even care about the support for more than 1 physical CPU, dynamic disks, offline files, etc. Plus the number of Win8 variants has been drastically reduced over Win7.

And for what it's worth, I'd rather admit that I run Windows 8, 9, 10, eleventytwelve, etc than something called Mountain Lion

 

who gives an rats ass about price/OEM/Retail windows, that you can get for around £30-£99 for home/pro/Ultimate version and Win8/pro as well, that was just 30 seconds of searching strate buying (if you went the Auction way maybe even cheaper)

 

this computer looks very nice though still not as quiet as my rasPI but sure is more powerfull

complaining about an 1x4gb stick over 2x2gb is bit picky 4gb is cheaper then 2x2gb sticks also better for the end user when they want to add another 4GB of ram, ram speed in dual channel or single channel most only affects winrar test results as well