Thanks for your feedback Tyler and Peter. I'll probably stick with what I have since it works really well and sounds great. To Tyler's point, the SB3 has much better sound circuitry than the embedded Fit-PC, so a direct output from the Fit-PC would reduce the sound quality. Also, I don't want a computer with a monitor, dongles, gadgets, or anything for that matter. I want a minimal system which has superb sound that I can afford and is easy to use. Using the SB3, which is much smaller than a typical monitor, as the interface for the embedded PC does exactly what I need it to do. I guess a lot of the discussion comes down to what you are trying to accomplish. I just want to play music easily.
Peter is quite right with my comfort level with Linux. Like the vast majority of PC users, I am not an expert with it. I have a couple of friends that have experimented with it (not in an application like this) and ultimately gave up on it because 1)there isn't nearly as much software that is available for it as compared with Windows, and 2) they fiddled with it endlessly... could well be lack of experience on their part, too. In this application, based on other's experience, Linux would work just fine, but part of the experiment was to use Windows XP on the Fit-PC to see if it would work adequately, which it does. Speedy performance in this application is not important... it just has to work. I have a home-built desktop speed demon on the home network which doesn't work any better as a Slim Server, at least not that is noticeable, than the little Fit-PC does. >From an OS stability standpoint, all I can say is that it runs 24/7 with no problems at all. The Fit-PC runs all the time and I have not had to re-start it since I first started it up. That's all I'm looking for. Even if I had to restart it once a month, I think that would be ok. If I had to restart it once or twice a week, that would probably be a pain. To be fair, if I were going to run a web server, I would not even consider using this since performance would then be a much bigger concern. In this case, it just has to serve up a FLAC file every 3-4 minutes or change web casts occasionally. Again, it is a minimalist system designed for a specific purpose. When I have more time I am going to try VNC again. The problem was that it didn't work with Slim Server running, so maybe I have to specify address and ports, etc. If anyone out there has made this work on any OS on a bridged slim server I'd like to hear your experiences. Worst case is I would buy a USB WAP, and just access it over the network using remote desktop. BTW, I have not been able to get remote desktop to work over the bridge connection, but I don't know enough about networking to know for sure if this is how it is supposed to behave. Everything I have read on the web says it won't work... you have to have standard network connection. Anyway, I appreciate your opinions very much. Part of the reason I posted this was to learn more about Slim Server systems, and your input is very helpful in that regard. Best Regards, Art -- artplow Art Plow SB3 Fit-PC Cambridge Audio Azur 540A (V.2) Bose 901 Series VI ------------------------------------------------------------------------ artplow's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=19435 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=51197 _______________________________________________ discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
