Introduction

Although technology shrinks in size constantly at what seems to be an ever-increasing pace, not everything has become smaller. Our desktop PCs, for example, are just as big as they ever were, although capable of much more work. Meanwhile, as drive technology has increased, laptops and tablets are more diminutive in nature for sure, and come with pretty amazing battery life at the same time. Our TVs and monitors have lost their bezels, too, and nearly any new TV today has basic compute capabilities and Wi-Fi built in. But what if you don't have a new TV, but want to get all that digital content onto your older flat-screen? ECS's LIVA provided that possibility.

I just got a new 2014 model of a TV and have to say that its built-in PC hardware is slow and cumbersome, and navigating through its interface with a standard remote is outright frustrating. If I want to watch a bit of YouTube or Netflix, I have to push so many buttons and wait for such a long time for the built-in OS to boot that I usually just don't bother and trudge down the stairs to my main PC and its lovely 30-inch IPS screen. And then I connected my ECS LIVA mini-PC to my TV and all that changed. The LIVA admittedly isn't the fastest box on the planet, and its limited expansion possibilities left me wanting a bit, so when ECS told me they had a new mini-PC in the works, the LIVA X, I got a bit excited. Larger storage, a bit faster silicon, and added storage space thanks to a built-in mSATA port? Added Windows7 support and better USB arrangement, too? Plus a VESA mount? ECS's LIVA-X isn't only all that... it is dead silent to boot.