Thread: Elite (ECS) PMI8M - Anyone use this MB? Is this a good deal?

Hi everyone, I'm looking for some opinions/information about this board. Please forgive me if this has been brought up before, but I did a forum search for "PMI8M" and looked through the mini-ITX sticky and couldn't find anything.

Even doing a google web search yields very little info... I tried looking at the ECS/Elite website, and the board wasn't even on there! I'm not too surprised by this, having dealt with Soyo (another Taiwanese MB company) in the past, but it still makes me a bit uncomfortable. On the other hand, this is the only mini-ITX/Pentium M combo that I have found that fits within my budget, so I am tempted to take the plunge. It looks like mini-box is offering this board bundled with a 1.6GHz Pentium M for $280. It's OEM, so it probably won't come with any accessories, but the manual is online, & I've got tons of cables laying around at home. The only thing I would miss is the backplate.

I am planning on connecting an 8" widescreen LCD (800x480?), and will be running Linux on it. It doesn't look like it has a CF reader, or even an on-board connection for one, but I would at least like to try using an IDE-CF adapter. I want to avoid putting a HD in my system.

Here are some specs for the board:
Socket 479
Intel 852GM/ICH4 chipset
mem: up to 1G DDR333
VGA: RGB + LVDS
8x USB 2.0 & 4x COM (nice)
2x 10/100 (No Gbit LAN)
No firewire (I don't need this)
No compact flash (I can get around this)
No SATA (trying to avoid hard drives anyway)

I know that there are much better intel boards out there (the i915GMt series looks quite nice), but these can get expensive quick after you pair it with a processor. I also know that I could get a VIA board with many more features for much less, but I've heard numerous times that Linux support is questionable here. Intel boards are supposed to be solid when it comes to Linux support, right? I guess I just need someone to tell me "hey, great choice" or "hey, that board sucks because..." before I go out and spend all this money.

Any opinions or user experiences will be GREATLY appreciated! Thanks!