John Oram wrote: > Day: > > Below I'll address only one item in your lengthy reinvention of x86 > DOS FIDOnet. > > Suggest you take a look at > http://www.silentpcreview.com/article17-page2.html > for real world comparison of power requirements of readily available > low power motherboards. > > The VIA Epia M9000 Mini-ITX Motherboard _with_ CPU costs less than > $100 and is significantly more powerful than your 80486 reference > system. These units are industry standard x86 off the shelf mobo > which are available at many local computer parts stores and over the > Internet by simply doing a search. > > I know of several locations which use this approach for solar > powered/battery powered systems which run 24/7/365.
Oh, BTW, thanx for the link. That much functionality in 30-50 watts aint too bad. But I got one on the bench behind me, ordinary ATX, with the VIA C3 and 128meg dram with an older IDE/SVGA controllers that runs on 55 watts. I think the question here is, what the minimum would be in order to do email. You dont need G4 or 20 gigs. And we are all familiar with the idea of a home server, so that whatever any of the desktops crash, it dont close down the access for everyone else. Lotsa SURVPCs could do that pretty well. And the onlyother factor is battery backup time, or if solar, what the panel cost is. which has been about 5$/watt. So the minimum from the article would need a $250 panel to do a couple hours of run time per day. I know several crafts people, some already online, who see they can make money off the net. But they dont make *much* money. It's the price you pay to live way the hell out in the boonies. They dont waste much time with computer games, much less G4. And while they'd like snapshots of their product, they aint interested in full motion real time video. All they need is email access to take orders, and like business people everywhere else, dont see any future in risking that *critical app* on the joys of multimedia operating systems.
