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Specifications

The Condor is the only SFF system we have looked at which provides not one but two PCI slots along with an AGP port. The Condor has nearly tool free chassis and it is slick. As far as features go, the Condor is a bit more on the barebones side compared to some other systems lacking onboard firewire (something that is nearly standard on every SFF system). The included bundle is pretty slim pickings too coming with just the driver CD, an instruction manual, 2 SATA cables and a molex to SATA converter.

I know what a STD is but not as an IT term

The good news it that the cables are not just standard run of the mill SATA cables- one of the ends has a 90 degree bend that is especially handy for drives inside the Condor. Like most other SFF systems, there is also an included processor cooler from FIC as there is no mounting bracket around the CPU socket like other 865 based boards.

On the FIC specs page for the Condor, they have also listed a 4 pin 1394 connector, 2 PCMCIA slots and a multimedia card reader as part of the front panel connectivity. These are apparently features reserved for a future iteration (for which we do not know of a release schedule/date) but they are not present on the current unit. The current front panel consists of a headphone jack, 2 USB ports as well as an optical out port. A microphone in port up front would also have been useful. As mentioned in our look at Soltek's Qbic system, we are unsure as to why optical in belongs on the front panel as it requires a stealthed bay to be left open as I am under the impression that most people will be connecting an optical out port to a receiver or something of the like. Note that this is the only optical out on the Condor.

The back of the Condor has a standard back panel with mini jacks for speakers, a lan port, 4 USB ports, a video out port and 2 PS/2 ports. Besides the two PS/ 2 ports note that there are NO legacy connectors available. That means no printer port, no serial port, nothing. It's not really a priority on my concern list but those that are still using older printers or have weird devices (a friend had a GPS unit that could upload data to a computer using a serial cable) might want to skip this. For any other reasonably modern computer user these are non issues.