Many software netflow solutions (such as nProbe) users, realized that running a probe on a PC (or any other common hardware) is not always the best choice for several reasons:

• PCs have moving parts that can break making the probe unavailable.
• PCs are large, need monitors and keyboards, whereas probes often need to be deployed on places where there is not much space available.
• Administering PCs is not cheap and they require the purchase of an OS, its installation and maintenance.
• In large networks divided in several trunks it is necessary to have several probes each analyzing a trunk.
  This requires that multiple hosts running nProbe are deployed across the network.
• The cost (for both hardware and maintenance) is not neglectable in particular if several probes need to be deployed.

If you’re a user that does not want to bother with installing software probes on a PC or that wants to have an hardware-based, scalable and purpose-built solution then you are probably a nBox user where you have a low-cost small factor computer with no moving parts and nProbe on board easy to administer using the embedded web interface.