Product Review: ECS Liva Mini PC

byRanneveryday •
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Having a mini PC that you can bring everywhere is one of the most convenient things that every consumers and techies would really want. By Elitegroup Computer Systems, they made a mini PC possible through their Liva Mini PC. So what makes Liva different and convenient? Here’s what I experience with ECS Liva Mini PC.


I have the 32 bit version of Liva Mini PC. There’s also a 64 bit available and you can distinguish it to its hard case color: black for 32 bit and white for 64 bit.

Size


With its small size, you can almost carry it with a palm, wherever you go. It is also lightweight with 190 grams, 118 x 70 x 56 millimeters dimension.

Specifications


Parts


ECS Liva Mini PC is a small device, perfect for do-it-yourselfers—the parts of Liva are separated. In short, you need to assemble each part to complete the whole Liva. Read my post on what are the parts of ECS Liva here.

Set-Up

Before you proceed with the set-up, be sure to have the following things prepared:
  • Keyboard
  • Monitor
  • Liva User Manual and Liva DVD for driver installation
  • Windows 8.1 Operating System
  • External DVD drive or USB Flash Drive
Follow the instructions located at the Liva User Guide for the BIOS set-up. After that, you can now proceed with the installation of Operating System (OS).


2 ways on how you can install your OS:

There’s a complete guide on the user manual on how you can set-up your OS in different ways. To summarize, here are the ways:
  1. If you don’t have a Windows 8.1 OS available, purchase an original DVD copy and use an External DVD drive to install.
  2. If you don’t have a DVD drive, download Windows 8.1 ISO file online. Put it in your flash drive, set your booting priority to USB and you are done.
In the OS installation part, I didn’t able to make my Liva Mini PC work. I actually did the two methods stated above but unfortunately, it keeps on bringing me to the BIOS set-up.

Liva Mini PC – The Pros and Cons


I happened to see and experience an actual and working Liva Mini PC. With what I saw and experienced, here are the Pros and Cons:

Pros:
  1. Very convenient. Easy to bring because of its size and weight.
  2. Because Liva is Fan-less (0 db), you can enjoy using Liva without being bothered with the noise.
  3. Perfect to use in office/schools with available hardware devices like keyboard, mouse, speakers, monitor, etc.
  4. Perfect for users who loves to assemble computer parts.
  5. Browsing the net, playing light games and using word documents with ease and fast processing.
  6. You can use a powerbank to power up your Liva Mini PC (Suggested: 3A).

Cons:
  1. Not wise to ordinary users who have less background with setting-up/assembling computer parts.
  2. No available Windows OS installed. Also, the Windows OS required is limited to version 8.1 only.
  3. Like other notebooks (with no DVD drive), you will be needing an external DVD drive to easily installed the OS and drivers to make Liva work. Otherwise, you are required to download and ISO file of Windows 8.1 OS and also manually download the drivers needed which is available to their site at http://www.ecs.com.tw/ECSWebSite/Product/Product_LIVA_DOWNLOAD.aspx?DetailID=1560&LanID=0

Price comparison:

ECS Liva Mini PC is around Php 8,000.00. With its price, you can enjoy the convenience of having a mini PC which you can bring wherever you go. But if you happened to avail Liva but lacks of other hardware/software parts needed, let us compare the price:

OS                        -    Php    3, 500.00
External DVD         -             2, 000.00
Monitor                 -             4, 000.00
Liva Mini PC           -            8, 000.00
Keyboard               -                500.00
Mouse                    -                200.00
                                  ________________
                                 Php    18, 200.00

With Php 18,200.00, you can almost buy a notebook or even a complete desktop.

Verdict


Liva Mini PC is surely a very innovative device perfect for techies and office workers, even students, to conveniently have a mini PC on the go. With its size, capabilities and specifications, Liva Mini PC is a must-have device for working people. It may need some improvements, but ECS is on its way to make Liva better as they launched a better version of Liva called Liva X. Read more about Liva X here.


About ECS
 
ECS, Elitegroup Computer Systems, was established in 1987. In recent years, ECS's main focus has expanded from motherboards to All-in-One PCs, notebook computers, graphics cards and other mobile products. ECS is strongly committed to developing cutting-edge technology in order to create innovative products under environmentally friendly designs. ECS's comprehensive quality control system ensures all of ECS products can be counted on for stability and reliability. Visit http://www.ecs.com.tw to learn more.



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