Cube51 CPU PC.

They're those funny looking Cube PCs, and they're wearing their summer colors. Ah, ain't that sweet? But, more accurately, the cube actually comes with seven different "face plates" which its owner can easily switch, as the mood takes him. Or her, probably. And those colors are: Sunshine Yellow, Classic Red, Dolphin Blue, Forest Green, True Black, Passion Orange, Pearl White. Lovely.

The small-footprint (200x300x185mm) Cube PCs incorporate an "Ice Technology heat pipe" in the casing, to keep the cubic PC cool as well as silent, and, possibly less importantly, there are a bunch of different models for you to choose from, depending on your needs. The sub-[yen] 100,000 Cube51 CPU PC has a Pentium 4 2.4GHz CPU, 256MB of RAM, a 60-gig hard drive and a DVD/CD-RW combo drive, which is a great start.

And if that's not enough computing va va voom for you, check out the Cube51-CPH, toting a 2.66 GHz Pentium 4 processor, 512 MB of PC2100 DDR RAM (expandable to a max of 2GB), an 80GB hard disk, FX5600 128 MB GeForce video card and DVD/CD-RW combo drive, all for [yen] 129,800. All cubes have Ethernet and (three!) Firewire, or IEEE 1394 ports, and a USB 2.0 socket and run on the Windows XP Home Edition OS. The new Cubes were being sold initially on the company's Web site, then in the stores themselves from late June.

More info: www.sofmap.com/shop/topics/ topics_02.asp?TPC_CD=3057