It's got a system fan in addition to the other moving parts, Page 2 first picture, top right. It is fairly quiet but the cpu is not passively cooled as you claim as the fan blows right across the heatsink once the two halves of the case are assembled. I have set up a couple of these and they are perfect for most of the basics, very quiet and tiny.

The entire point of this PC is that it consumes little power, so comparing it against another PC without comparing power use is rather pointless.

How much power does the Vostro consume?

Splodman you're right - the fan is in the photo and it is so quiet that I never even heard it running in a very - that's VERY - quiet office.

'...so it’s hard to avoid the wretched Windows sound at start-up.'

I've always removed and replaced that naff Windows sound file on every PC I've owned or had to use.

Try looking in C:\WINDOWS\Media where you'll find :-

Windows XP Startup.wav and many more system sound files, which are of course easily replaced by any .wav sound file of your choice, renamed to the original filename of course.

Other Windows systems have similar files, easily found and replaced.

I've a hunch this puppy is aimed at the business desktop space, hence the small capacity HD and no DVD writer. The low power consumption would be of much more interest if you're running 200 or 10,000 of these! Of course a 2.5" HD would've used even less...

On a similar quest my home server uses low power components (Via CPU, 2x 160GB laptop drives) and uses around 31w at idle, rising to 45-50w under heavy load.

Or you could just use the Sound option under Control Panel. That'll just change it or even disable it without mucking around.

Why should they? The physical size hardly matters for a desktop machine, and if they can use this PSU on other products too then it saves money. The annoying thing is that the power supply is not built in, like with a normal desktop machine.

Also, just because you measured 55W maximum doesn't mean that there won't be larger peaks - disk spin-up is an obvious one.

This is aimed at the business deskspace - I've recently deployed several of these and their variants. And I'll go for a ThinkCentre over a Dell any time thank you very much.