On Sat, Apr 25, 2009 at 11:50:04AM -0400, voltaic wrote: > I have been looking into this kind of thing myself. What I found is > that getting an Atom nettop computer would be a significant downgrade > in performance (from my Pentium M). Both in performance and > power/Watt. Also, GMA900 on the EEEs is slow enough that rendering > webpages is not very smooth. Imagine what that would be like in 3 > years.
Hmm, currently my Pentium 4 M works quite well, but as I said, JavaScript will slow down our computers much more in the future ;). > I looked at two things. First is the Neuros Link, which has a low > power Athlon LE-1660. The form factor is not that small, and it does > have a fan (supposedly quiet), but it does accommodate a full hard > drive, has eSATA, DVI and HDMI. The problem with it is the ATI > graphics chip... Linux support for these is still terrible, despite > the recent releases of documentation. The open source driver is moving > very slowly for the AMD/ATI hardware. ATI graphics cards are a no-go criteria for me, I've enough trouble with the one in my laptop. > Though, Neuros Link is very cheap ($250): > http://www.neurostechnology.com/neuros-link > > Another item is the Dell Studio Hybrid. That thing gets good reviews. > It is a real computer, unlike the Atom stuff. There is a Core 2 Duo > laptop processor in there, which is the best performance/Watt you can > get. Apparently it is very quiet (does have a fan), draws 25W at idle, > and 40W max, and has a GMA X3100 graphics chip. DVI and HDMI (though > only one can be active at a time, so no dual screen). It can be had > for $500. Sadly, it is not small enough to be VESA mountable. Also, no > eSATA, so you are stuck with a single internal drive. > > http://www.dell.com/hybrid Yes, the received a gold rating from EPEAT: http://www.epeat.net/ProductDisplay.aspx?return=search&action=view&search=true&productid=1897&epeatcountryid=1 But today every major Computer manufacturer has that. > Anyway, I think both of these options are imperfect, but maybe someone > will find them useful. I am waiting for the NVIDIA Ion stuff to come > out. NVIDIA has a acceptable Linux drivers I hear. Proprietary drivers are not acceptable for. I ported the Nvidia drivers to the latest -mm tree for a while and that was no fun. X.org updates broke them entirely and you had to wait a week or so to use 3d acceleration again. > -v Regards, Matthias-Christian
