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Zonbu Zonbox
Hardware
The hardware isn't very powerful, but it really doesn't need to be. Since it runs Linux, it's possible to get away with slower hardware for the same user experience as a Windows-based PC. Zonbu's website touts the Zonbox as having an Intel low voltage CPU, however, the unit I received had a VIA Esther 1.2GHz CPU. It also has a graphics chip, 512MB of RAM (shared between video and memory), and a 4GB compact flash card that acts as the hard drive. The graphics chip in the unit I received was a Via Unichrome AGP-based part, and the maximum resolution I could choose was 1280x1024 (my LCD's native resolution is 1920x1200). Zonbu's website states that the graphics chip will support display resolution up to 2048x1536 pixels. [I should note that we did receive an early version of the Zonbu Zonbox, so I'm not completely surprised that there have been some hardware changes since then. - Ed] Some might balk at the small 4GB capacity, but its main purpose is to function as a place for the OS and as a data cache for your online storage account. The boot up time was 71 seconds, and the shutdown time was about 27 seconds. Applications loaded fairly quickly with the processor provided. I didn't have any problems starting Firefox, Open Office, or any of the other applications that came with the unit. The machine is also dead silent. The Zonbox makes no more noise turned on than it does turned off. This is due to the fact that it uses passive cooling with a low speed processor, as well as a flash-based drive. Software The Zonbox runs Linux, which appears to be the Gentoo distribution. The kernel is version 2.6.17 and comes loaded with many pieces of software that are designed to make the out-of-the-box experience easy - you don't have to download additional software and then figure out how to install it in Linux. One of the interesting things they've done is to not provide the user with a list of applications (Firefox, Open Office, etc). Rather, they give the icons the name of the function of the application: Web Browsing, Mail, Instant Message, etc. This goes a long way toward making it more user-friendly. I won't review the individual pieces of software beyond some simple tests since this isn't a review of Linux software. The first pieces of software are the web browser, e-mail client, and IM software. The Zonbox was preloaded with Firefox, Evolution (mail), and GAIM (now called Pidgin) for the IM client. Firefox performs just as well as it does on the PC or the Mac. Evolution is a full-featured mail client, supporting advanced features like spam filtering, to-do lists, iCalendar support, and search folders (virtual folders that have defined criteria). The Zonbox came loaded with Banshee software (I was using version 0.12.1, the most recent). This application functions as a music management tool, which is also used for MP3 players (including iPods). Unfortunately, I don't have an iPod to test with (Banshee didn't recognize the iPhone, and my old iPod is Firewire-based). Also, the software wasn't able to read music and movies from remote file shares on my Windows servers, so my ability to play music was severely hampered. The photo management software, F-Spot, didn't recognize my iPhone either (it recognized it as a camera and started F-Spot, but wasn't able to import any photos), though it did pick up on a Canon PowerShot A85 point-n-shoot camera just fine and proceeded to work well. Zonbu also included some other software, including the Skype VoIP client, peer-to-peer clients Azureus and aMule, an assortment of arcade-style games, a media player, and the GnuCash personal finance manager. Finally, the Zonbox comes with a "Neighborhood" icon on the desktop, which allows it to recognize other Windows PCs on the local network. However, there were several obstacles to having a perfectly-interoperable solution. The first was the extremely low timeout on network shares. After about a minute, when I tried to read or write a file from the file share opened on the Zonbox, it asked me for my credentials again, and I discovered that there is no way to save them. Instead, I had to enter them every time. Next, the problem was that I couldn't set up a printer connection to a printer that was hidden (in Windows, putting a $ at the end of a share name hides it from the directory). I was forced to pick from a list, and the printer didn't show up in that list. I would like to point out that I didn't have these problems from my other non-Windows computer in my house (my MacBook). I should also note that I did have the Zonbox lock up on me a few times during the course of the review at an average of about once per day.
Page 1: Introduction & First Looks
Page 2: Hardware & Software Page 3: Online Storage & Power Consumption Page 4: Pricing & Add-Ons Page 5: Conclusion 
Related Reviews Add Comment
3 User Comments 1 - Posted by
handrail
on August 7, 2007 - 4:27 pm seems like this would be a much better idea if it could use a large format solid state hdd rather than the online storage. maybe when the larger SSDs come along, this will be a more feasible concept?
2 - Posted by
Max Slowik
on August 7, 2007 - 7:08 pm You can get CF cards in what, 16 and 32GB flavors? Holy crap, they're cheap. $125 for 16GB. It seems like just last year that would buy you 512MB. 3 - Posted by
handrail
on August 8, 2007 - 10:37 am yeah, in a year i'm sure they'll be up to the 100+ GB sizes. i can't wait for those. i've been holding out on serial drives in favor of the SSDs.
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