how come no one talks about alix/apu's (Score 1)

http://www.pcengines.ch/apu.htm these things are great. more expansion options and purpose built than the little boxes you might find on amazon or similar in the same category. really just more capable in general. passive cooling, runs anything you want to put on it, dedicated serial port.. GPIO, mPCIe expansion its perfect for this 'homebrew' stuff, especially a firewall/network appliance.