Topic: asus eee

[mercyh]

It is more fun to have a computer heated apartment then an apartment heated by other electrical things.

I like your viewpoint...

unfortunately not all of us live in the Antarctica, so we may be actually paying to undo the heating.. (possibly a bigger cost then the electricity to run the computer )

[mercyh]

Just for interest sake. My UPS shows usage. Here is what I get.

2-PC's

1-has two hardrives and an intel quad core processor
1-has one hardrive and a P4 2.8ghz processor
1-19" LCD monitor
1-17" CRT (which is normally powered down as it is now)
1-Tape adding machine

Total power usage = 207 watts.

[imcintyre]

and occasionally, people have to cool their apartments/homes so less can be more. The appeal can also be to do what is necessary consuming the least amount of space. No need for a monitor, keyboard, UPS etc.

[arne]

Possibly slightly off topic according to the original question, but if saving energy is a main issue, this alternative looks very interressting:

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/Atom-Athlon-Efficient,review-31253.html

I think I would like to try this alternative ..

[dgs]

Since this topic has evolved into into a discussion on low power consumption options, I'll throw Via Artigo into the mix as well.  http://www.mini-itx.com/2007/12/10/via-launch-artigo-pico-itx-builder-kit.

And along the lines AMD have taken there is also a lower power option which will run without fan cooling.
http://www.mini-itx.com/store/?c=41

The advantages of these mini sized packages potentially are
- Potentially Silent
- Small form Factor
- Ultra low power consumption.

The disadvantages are
- much more expensive relative to much more capable budget servers such as Dell T105 or Dell SC440
- performance will probably be unacceptable for most SME server applications
- I have yet top see any configurations on offer with 2 NIC interfaces so Server/Gateway operation is pretty much ruled out.

(If anyone knows  of any of these micro systems with 2 on-board NICs I'd love to source one, though not for use as an SME replacement)

I would be interesting to see any feedback from those who have tried any of these mini sized solutions in SME applications.

[christian]

unfortunately not all of us live in the Antarctica, so we may be actually paying to undo the heating.. (possibly a bigger cost then the electricity to run the computer )

exactly, I am in a northern climate so about 10 months of the year my server and peripherals are net contributors.

In hotter climates what you will find is for every 1 Watt of power you consume in direct electricity, you will need 0.85W of power to extract/cool the excess heat. If you then add UPS overheads, power supply inefficiencies (good ones are about 80% efficient), and distribution losses you are looking typically at 2x-3x the actual electrical draw of the appliance (in a home environment). Data Centres can be anywhere from 2x to 4x thus why 3x is often approximated.

You can buy or borrow a "Kill-A-Watt" meter which will do a good power consumption approximation. To buy is about $20 though in Ottawa at least you borrow them from the library.

Christian

[Trashman]

Maybe i can add some helpfull info here, im runing actually my SME server on an old notebook, p3 500mhz, 320mb ram, 40gb hdd, its runing fine and im pretty sure it consumes a ridicule amount of energy and generates even less heat, do a search on google and/or ebay for Compaq Armada M300, even the price you pay for it is ridicule this days, more if you manage to get one without the screen (be carefull to get one with the base dock, no internal cd can be a pain to install sme)...this model have integrated ethernet and a pcmcia slot, so you can add a second network card (and it can be either wifi or wired) and its VERY small (that was my desicive point as i kinda dislike bulky things, i prefer thing appliance like)...it also have an usb port...the ac adapter says 18,5W but im pretty sure that without screen, the base (you can remove it after install, it only have the drives) and battery the thing must be consuming kinda 12W or less...
This particular lappy model also have a strange thing very usefull in some situation...if you plug it without the battery it turns on automatically...this is usefull because if you get a blackout the system turns itself on when the power comes back, you dont need to do it yourself, very appliance like...and very usefull in some parts of the world where the power network is not 100% reliable...(anyway im not sure if that kind of spontaneous turn off is any good to a linux install, some1 please shed some light on this unrelated subject)

[meneer]

I just had a look at asus eee box pc, not the laptop, but the desktop version, with an 80 GB harddisk (enough for me).
It's a very small unit and it only consumes some 18 watts. I calculated that the energy savings alone will save me the cost of the unit in 2 years.

Here's a link.

[dgs]

The EEE box looks good, biggest negative I can see (assuming it works for SME) is on a single NIC rules out using an EEE box as a SME server/Gateway.

I found another box, that's even smaller and better spec-ed then the EEE which has models available with dual LAN, I've ordered a few for another project and was going to try to run up SME on one, and see what works and what doesn't.

http://www.compactpc.com.tw/ebox-4852.htm

It's still cheaper to buy a more powerful budget Dell poweredge, but that does not have the small form factor and power saving advantages. 

[meneer]

The EEE box looks good, biggest negative I can see (assuming it works for SME) is on a single NIC rules out using an EEE box as a SME server/Gateway.

It does have both a lan interface as a wifi (B/G/N) adapter. So it could be used as a server/gateway

[Trashman]

Also dont forget those usb-ethernet adaptor...maybe not the best option but there must be some usb 2.0 and speedy enough...(also some isp provide their modems with usb access, not very common tho)

[arne]

Another option is a second hand laptop with a PC-card (PCMCIA) slot. I have not tried it yet, but I would guess it would work with a PC-card network adapter, so it can run in gateway mode. It the switch that is activated when you close the laptop, and if there is not to much heat, this might be an interesting and quite compact server gateway. Have not done this project yet, but have the parts, and guess I will try it out .. If eee, laptop or stationary is used, I guess the important thing will be to use a model with "clasical harddisk" as this will be a bether solution for a server.   

[kevinb]

Not to get off topic but this may be of interest .... http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/Atom-Athlon-Efficient,1997.html.

I have also seen a setup which used an automobile PC (low power, solidstate, no fans, SSD for hard drive) with a USB external drive for storage capacity. It was very clean. The computer was about the same size as the USB drive.

[Trashman]

Maybe i can add some helpfull info here, im runing actually my SME server on an old notebook, p3 500mhz, 320mb ram, 40gb hdd, its runing fine and im pretty sure it consumes a ridicule amount of energy and generates even less heat, do a search on google and/or ebay for Compaq Armada M300 yada yada yada yada......

Another option is a second hand laptop with a PC-card (PCMCIA) slot. I have not tried it yet, but I would guess it would work with a PC-card network adapter, so it can run in gateway mode. It the switch that is activated when you close the laptop, and if there is not to much heat, this might be an interesting and quite compact server gateway. Have not done this project yet, but have the parts, and guess I will try it out .. If eee, laptop or stationary is used, I guess the important thing will be to use a model with "clasical harddisk" as this will be a bether solution for a server.  

Ajem...original idea?

Also i want to point out that the lappy i mention there also allow a second hard drive to be installed INTERNALLY...how? in the dock, the optical drive can be replaced with a hard drive caddy that goes on the same slot...this gives a lot of options in security, backup, redundancy, etc that you usually cant get so easy from a lappy...
The dock with the optical is factory standard in this model...and the caddy is also ridicully cheap...and also this dock support dvdrw as example, another good option to have in mind...