Mine is virtually the same as Dabe Murphy's
Shuttle XPC SN85G4 (Small Form Factor)
Athlon64 3200+ CPU
nVidia nForce3 150 chipset (Flawless!)
250GB Seagate (I think) SATA HDD
ATI Radeon 9600 (avoid ATI like the plague, it is load of garbage without
the driver support)
2x512MB DDR400 RAM
DVD+/-RW
5 in 1 card reader also standard, but a bit wobbly about recognising the
card. Since 9.1 it has mounted manually reasonably reliably (but not 100%)
Brother HL-1430 printer goes fine, and the USB does recognise this.
It doesn't report running hot.
I use SuSE 9.1 Professional.
I started with 9.0 - had so much trouble with the SATA that I went and
bought XP, and proceeded to have exactly the same problem. In the end I
solved the SATA on 9.0 first, so XP has never been loaded and I've never
missed it. There is No FDD on these machines.
9.1 has worked a treat and I love my little black beast except for the ATI
card which will be replaced with a Radeon when sufficient cash and
momentum develop.
I use it for programming multiagent models using Eclipse (love it) and
RePast, for writing my PhD using OpenOffice. Most of the time I use it for
avoiding these two activities via Civilisation CTP and Creatures. Due to
the PhD thing, it's pure standalone. No internet, no network connection at
the moment, and no YOU.
I really like using Linux and have had generally good experiences with SUSE.
Sue Street