“This article briefly goes over six mini systems that you don’t have to build yourself. They are an ideal platform for a project or for a silent system for simple tasks like checking your email. The intention was to find systems that are small, Linux-ready, and customizable, but price was factored in as well.”
This would be something I’d like to give to my grandmother. She’s very concerned with the power consumption.
now thats darn interesting.
now if only they where easy to come by in my part of the world.
that dectop is tempting. and given how easy it is to add stuff using usb these days, could be turned into quite the desktop machine if your not into games.
sometimes i wish i had one of these for day to day web/mail/office tasks and a big iron for those gaming moments.
While a lot of these products may be shunned as being less than PC, I like the appliance concept. While I like a “real” computer to play with, I’d rather do my regular computing like word processing, web browsing, and e-mail on something as reliable as most consumer electronic devices like my TV. For day to day use I use my iMac, which is pretty damned close, and that’s part or the reason I’m a Mac user.
These look fun on the basis of building them as a hobby but none strikes me as cost effective. In each case, you’d have to add on the cost of a screen, keyboard and mouse, and probably external storage too. A well-chosen second-hand laptop would provide all of this and more for the same money, and if you add on the power requirements of the peripherals each of these appliances would need, I doubt that a modest lappy would use much if any more power. Debian Unstable still runs very nicely here on a six-year-old P3 Toshiba.
yes, all six are a waste of money. five are probably less powerful as an fast p2 or slow g3, you shouldn’t have to spend more than 100 € for a complete used system. puppy linux screams on a p2 with 400 mhz.
the last one is the only one which will at least be able to play most streaming video used on websites – but an old mac mini g4 would be the cheaper, better and more elegant solution.
These systems are not designed for having the best price/performance ratio, but rather for space and power efficiency.
I’ll grab a similar system in a few weeks (a Soekris board) for using it as a router; again, it’s not about performance (already got a K6-2), but power, space, heat dissipation, etc.
Perhaps a Mac Mini G4 would be better, but it’s definitely not cheaper or power efficient. Just take a look at eBay; Apple hardware tend to hold its value for quite a while.
I agree. I guess people prefer paying an extra buck or too to have a laptop with everything integrated (screen, mouse, keyboard, webcam…), and you can take your laptop away easier.
Not a good idea.
My Vista/Linux laptop costed $300 and is far more powerful than any these systems, plus it comes with a nice 15.4″ wide screen display.
I can see your point, but I’d have thought it’s more a case of “horses for courses”. Personally I’m interested in sticking a device on my network that I can leave on all the time (so power is an issue) to run periodic tasks and act as a lightweight server for the rest of the network. For this, a screen/keyboard/mouse would be unnecessary, and most laptops still need fans.
Since I don’t have any experience with any of these devices I’d certainly be interested to hear of any better alternatives to these for this task. I don’t think a laptop would be it, though.
They seem like a great concept to me. Laptops remain very delicate personal devices, whereas these look like they should live on a network for anyone to use.
If you’re looking for a small network-edge or server-type device that you can leave on all the time, I’ve played around with devices from the following manufacturers:
http://www.soekris.com
http://www.pcengines.ch
In both cases, my goal has been to create small home/small office gateways with standard network server utilities (DHCP, DNS, DynDns, NTP, 802.11a/b/g access point, smtp proxy, firewall, etc…) and systems from both vendors work wonderfully in these circumstances. In my cases, I’ve used small Compact Flash cards as hard disks and had the systems run with the flash filesystem(s) mounted read-only, so even under power loss the system will reboot as expected with a minimum of downtime.
Thanks echo.ranger, that’s helpful. I’ll take a look at the two websites as it sounds like they may fit the bill.
“
”
I don’t agree with your sentiments at all. Devices like there are better for home *nix servers. eg a local store for MP3s on a home network, a firewall / router, mail server, etc.
While you will need a keyboard and monitor for the set up (not a problem for me as I have a KVM switch) but once it’s running a simple SSH login remotly will do the job.
At the moment I’m having to keep my server in the hall as the machines hum (as quiet as it is) is too intrusive to be kept in a bedroom, lounge or the dinning room. This wouldn’t be an issue with with these devices
Well, I understand your argument but on the other hand, I would not run anything important on these little toasters.
What kind of server performance do you think you’ll get out these?
And they will not be very reliable because of wear due to heat.
I remember a few years back these “book pc’s” were popular for a while.
But the sucked. Bad performance, cheap and crappy components, and they all failed withing 2-3 years of light use. Power supply and motherboard failures, and very hard to find replacement parts because they were discontinued.
If I need a small server I’ll use a mini tower with micro atx motherboard and standard components.
Easy to find replacement parts and performance is pretty good.
And to reduse noise, fanless power supply can be used and possibly even water cooling.
I had no idea there were so many alternatives.
And they didn’t even mention Soekris (http://soekris.com/) or EFIKA (http://www.genesippc.com/openclient.php).
OpenBrick ?
http://the.taoofmac.com/space/OpenBrick
Seems to be dead though 🙁
I’m thinking about buying one, but I’ll add more memory because I have a computer that has 256MB of RAM already and it’s threshing all the time. I’d buy at least a gig of ram so that I can have my favorite apps open in the background.
Try Mepis Anti-X. It is a full-blown distro (mepis is based on Ubuntu) that should rock on your 256MB Ram machine. I use it on one of my older laptops.
http://zenwalk.org is another one that claims to run on 128 Megs of RAM.
I think a lot of projects — especially ones that are ‘ambitiously unambitious,’ which try to keep things simple and small — could benefit by keeping ports to these systems in mind.
Small Time Operating System, Inc., could really make a niche for themselves by putting their OS on one of these machines. I mean, even the most expensive one decked out with all the options doesn’t come to $500.
Last-minute edit: For example, Amiga.
Edited 2007-07-27 14:20
I could definitely see myself using one of these as some sort of set top box appliance using MythTV. I don´t know if there are USB-based TV tuner cards out there but the lack of an optical drive is a killer, though. It would be nice if they left some expandability options to the user, even if they had to sacrifice some of those nifty designs of theirs.
I´d love to find one Micro or Mini-ATX based computer with a good looking case (one that does not resemble a computer at all) that fits the minimum requirements for a good MythTV rig.
I just saw a case like that in a magazine here in Brazil (Info Exame) last week.
Unfortunately I have no scanner to show you, but it looked pretty much like a stereo… it was kinda big, though: same size as a stereo (not microsystems) around 1998
But it didn’t resemble a PC case at all.
If I ever find a picture of it I’ll post it.
I´d appreciate that a lot. Thanks, mate!
I was at a nyexpo a few years ago and a rep from SilverStonetek was there with some pretty nice cases on display. Some are made for HTPC and mythtv, kind of what you are looking for. Their site is http://www.silverstonetek.com so check them out. They are a bit pricey though.
Sweet! Yeah, price is always an issue with these non-standard form factor computers. The cost to acquire this and then have it shipped to Brazil kinda gets prohibitive, though. But on the other hand, these are not so easy to find here. Either way, I´m working on a budget here so I´ll give preference to the cheapest home brew solution that I can find.
I became more interested in HTPCs lately after the purchase of a DivX/XviD-capable DVD recorder some time ago. And MythTV fits the bill nicely as I intended to turn the machine into a nice gaming unit as well (to use old arcade games that I am addicted to with the MAME module) to toy around with my daughters…
naturally, the only game ROMs you play in MAME are the ones made from arcade boards you physically possess… right?
Of course!
The decTop for $99 looks quite well suited for a thin client though it needs an external USB-ethernet adapter.
I’ve been playing with a K12LTSP setup (based on Fedora) running on a low budget box as a server with several drive less old e433 PCs for clients and a junk 10MB/s hub.
I’m pleasantly surprised this lowly setup is useable IMO running regular apps like firefox.
When I get sound working, I’ll be sold on thin clients so the decTop looks worth it to save power.
If you’re looking for simple thin-client boxes for LTSP, you might be interested in these:
http://www.norhtec.com/products/mcjr/index.html
Cheaper than the DecTop (as the $99 version requires a 2 year subscription to that Amazon remote storage solution) and smaller. While I haven’t played with these myself, I’m planning to get one for a thin-client test box soon.
Thanks for the link.
I like the price, spec and that the MicroClient Jr can mount to the back of an LCD.
This is what I hope to advocate for a friends cyber cafe business and my local school systems.
The cost of postage for the decTOP seems a bit high.
Another thing you might note is that some of these can run Windows Home Server…
Does anyone have any experience with the decTOP? I could make a nice little personal web server out of that. I’ve been trying to use vmware for the task but it uses a good amount of resources and I’m having a bit of trouble connecting up to the image from a remote workstation. If I could use the decTOP as a dedicated personal web server to learn with.
…in tinkering around, go to mini-itx.com. Great site. A little more pricey, but there is some fun stuff on it.
OLPC?
A jumping, screaming Steve Ballmer!
*ducks*
Sorry, couldn’t resist. 😉
Edited 2007-07-27 17:28
Has anyone seen a unit like one of these with DVI output? That would make an ideal X-terminal, I would think. I’ve always wanted to have a simple kitchen computer that’s silent and small; just a touch-sensitive LCD with a tiny computer taped to the back, but I hate using VGA cables with digital displays. I guess it doesn’t matter much, but has anyone seen one anyhow?
Edit: One of the commenters linked to http://www.genesippc.com/openclient.php – that looks pretty cool…
Edited 2007-07-27 18:42
these would be an excellent solution for diskless systems, http://www.jadeintegration.com/jackpc.php but as it says on the site you can only pxe boot win ce. i wonder what the status of linux support is, or even netbsd because they use risc chips.
they took embedded quite literally. Still looks amazing, thanks for the link.
Greenphone?
They look very interesting.. I think the fit pc may be in my future. Looks like it will work for one of my applications here. Interesting article.
Cheers
Dave