So you want a mini PC but don't want to go down the Mac mini route? Well, help is at hand thanks to AOpen and Evesham. But there is a cloud on the horizon, and in this case it's the price.

The new Evesham Mini PC Plus is built from an AOpen mini PC barebone chassis and is small enough to fit into the palm of your hand (16 x 16 x 5cm). It looks the part, too, in its brushed aluminium case. The slot-loading DVD burner and blue LED power button add to the overall look of the Mini PC. But beauty isn't just skin-deep, and if you take into account the small size of the thing, the Mini PC performs rather better than expected.

At the heart of the system lies an Intel Pentium M 760 (that's 2GHz to you and me) backed by 512MB of PC4200 DDR2 memory. With a system this small you are going to have to rely on integrated graphics; in this case they are supplied by the Intel i915GM chipset which uses system memory.

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All of which gives the Mini PC Plus a Sysmark 04SE score of 140; not Earth-shattering but still plenty good enough for all the mundane everyday jobs. On the other hand, as you might expect, the graphics performance is poor, but then again this isn't marketed as a gaming platform.

So you may think this little box would make the ideal basis for a Home Theatre PC, but there is a problem and that's the audio subsystem, in that it only supports two channels. Without the option of a multi-channel output such as S/PDIF you are stuck with just the two. On the other hand, you do get a DVI port (a DVI-VGA adapter is included) and TV out, the dongle for which comes with S-Video, component and composite out connectors.

The Mini PC Plus comes with integrated Gigabit Ethernet and there is a mini PCI slot available for a Wireless LAN option (£42.54 + VAT extra). For storage there is an 80GB, 5,400rpm laptop drive, and the DVD burner is a dual format, dual layer unit (8x DVD read, 8x DVD+/-R, 4x DVD+/-RW, 2.4x DVD-R Dual Layer) so there's no problem with backing up your data.

As with most Evesham systems you can configure the Mini PC Plus more to your liking. For example, you can get a faster CPU, more memory or a larger, faster hard drive. But remember that the basic price doesn't include a monitor, keyboard, mouse or speakers so if don't already have these you'll have to budget for them.

Small and stylish, yes, but if you must have an Intel alternative to a Mac mini, then be prepared to dig deep, as it comes with a relatively hefty price tag. There is, though, the option of a cheaper version, the Mini PC (without the 'Plus'): slower processor, smaller hard drive and £200 cheaper.