Exclusive AOpen's Mac Mini-like Mini PC is coming to the UK next week, The Register can reveal, courtesy of an exclusive deal between the manufacturer and reseller Evesham.

But while the machine may be compact, the price isn't: Evesham will want £699 including VAT for the MiniPC when it goes on sale on Monday, 5 December. That's rather more than the £359-499 Apple is charging for the comparably styled and sized Mac Mini. Like the Apple product, the MiniPC ships without a keyboard, mouse or monitor.

Evesham will be offering the 16.5 x 16.5 x 5cm computer with Intel's 2GHz Pentium M 760 processor, the chip giant's 915GM chipset, 512MB of 333MHz DDR 2 SDRAM, an 80GB, 5400rpm HDD and a dual-layer DVD-RW drive. Evesham is shipping the machine with Windows XP Media Center Edition.

The unit contains two USB 2.0 ports, a six-pin FireWire port, DVI and S-Video monitor and TV outputs, Gigabit Ethernet, and a microphone and speaker ports.

Evesham is going to offer an optional Wi-Fi card for £50, and a digital and analog TV tuner for £70. The MiniPC is offered with a one-year back-to-base warranty. ®

Update Evesham subsequently informed us they will offer a second model, based on a Celeron M 360 CPU, and with a 40GB HDD. The price is £499 inc. VAT.