pablolie;188809 Wrote: > The sceptics on the architecture better take a look around... I think it > makes *total* and utter sense to use *one* PC in the house as a server > for all sorts of things - that's where the most cost effective and > largest concentration of CPU power and storage is always going to > reside - so I want it to do more than just act as a text editor and > Internet browser. The more and harder it works, the more mileage I am > getting out of my investment in a household server. > > The SB3 is a brilliant concept, in my opinion, providing an *optimal* > bridge between that computer in its function as a media repository, and > my specialized audio equipment, which for the time doing will do a > better job in its function, or perhaps has just trained my ears to have > me very convinced that it does. :-) > > I actually would not like for a heavier computer to be anywhere near my > audio environment, but for those who don't care... build up a small and > cheap PC with good power standby capabilities, close the the SB and be > done with it. The SS requirements are very modest, really. > > I for one think we better get used to the concept of an "always on" > computer in the house. Of course the power management capabilities > should be robust, but that is quite common place I would hope - mine > actually will spin stuff down and consume little power when nothing is > happening. > > But other than the power concerns -and I'd need to be convinced that > multiple CPUs doing specialized tasks in different parts of the house > can be more power effective- I see only advantages to the concept - one > user interface and one remote (one sweet day! The Pronto is not the > relief I expected!) for all functions!
Excellent post. Adding player resources, even today, is still expensive while there are VAST unused resources available in any typical PC. It's not like the SB/Transporter CPU is sitting there doing nothing. Quite the contrary, Slim has put it to good use and is, in fact, stretching it to the limit: the Transporter even with the binned 325 MHz CPU, between 24/96 playback, ReplayGain and the spectrum analyzer, will run out of CPU cycles: http://bugs.slimdevices.com/show_bug.cgi?id=4463 In order to do everything the SB does today plus act as its own SlimServer, the CPU would need to be a lot more powerful. This would (ironically) be bad for power consumption. The SB already gets knocked for consuming 5W on idle - this would double or triple. But my PC is already always on, and it's still less than 1% CPU while running SlimServer, Windows XP, antivirus, firewall, etc. Take advantage of the economies of scale of computer hardware! There are huge plants devoted to making as much of this hardware as cheaply as possible. One could easily say most of Taiwan's economy is devoted to this. My goodness, I saw a motherboard + Intel Celeron D onboard for $99.99 CDN the other day. While this isn't SOTA computer hardware, this would annihilate most embedded processors and would certainly win in cost/performance. -- Mark Lanctot ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Mark Lanctot's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=2071 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=33695 _______________________________________________ discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
