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Portable, High Performance, Computing Options? 45

Posted by Cliff from the a-desktop-PC-in-a-compact-form dept.
Mostly a lurker asks: "I am a consultant with a need for a high performance machine (fast I/O and minimum 1GB RAM, perhaps more) with which I sometimes travel. I am willing to accept anything up to a 20lb traveling weight, but it must be compact enough to take by air. I would obviously welcome something that does not break the bank. Right now, the best I can come up with is something built around the Shuttle SB51G XPC with a separate LCD monitor and keyboard. It is really frustrating at the apparent lack of good alternatives. If I could wait six months then, the best desknotes would probably fit the bill (with the new IBM 7200 RPM drives). Today's desknotes fall short on I/O performance, and I would not be able to push RAM past 1GB. The lunchbox computers that qualify for air travel are mostly expensive rubbish, unless one's main concern is ruggedization. All-in-one computers like the IBM NetVista, Gateway Profile and ECS Aio's also seem to fall short. So, am I totally missing another great option? Have I mis-evaluated one of the options above? If I go the Shuttle XPC route, is there a really good light (and, equally important, compact) LCD monitor out there that someone wants to recommend [15" minimum, 17" would be nice, 30ms refresh or better, XGA acceptable, SXGA nice]? Thanks."
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Portable, High Performance, Computing Options? More

Portable, High Performance, Computing Options?

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  • Look for a laptop (Score:2, Informative)

    by KFK2 ( 23515 )
    I'm not sure what the I/O specs are, but I know you can get laptops with 2 RAM slots and it shouldn't be hard to get a Gig of RAM for those.. for Processor, I know my brother has a 1.7GHz P4 in his new Toshiba, along with a 15" UXGA screen and a GeForce4 video card (not sure exact model).. all for around $2,000, too, so it won't break the bank.
    • ...has about as fast a laptop as you will find. 3.0GHz. Only 512M RAM atm, but wait a week, they'll get it to a gig.

      Don't expect much battery life. :)
      • Alianware is also pretty good about upgrades, all you have to pay for is the parts (no labor) and they will replace parts, even give you a new chassis if you don't like the colour
    • The only other consideration I might throw out there would be ... two laptops. With rare exception (the exception being single task, single thread - ie. rendering 3d CAD drawings, or playing first person shooters) two discrete mid range machines are way faster than a single high end machine, generally at the same price point. Price in hardware goes up exponentially as performance goes up, and size comes down (cost 4x as much to go 2x as fast, etc...)

      You mentioned the need for 1G of RAM - which means you are developing Java applications that will be run on a WebSphere etc... appserver, developed in VisualAge for Java and running it all on one box, you are doing MASSIVE 3d solid models in SolidWorks / Inventor, or you are just blowing smoke and don't really need 1G of RAM.

      A Dell M50 is going to run you $4k with a 2.0GHz / 60G / 1G RAM setup ... four grand would just about buy you two nicely configured Latitude C840s / Inspiron 8200s. Use one as your 'server' and one as your 'development workstation' - voila! instant distributed system. By offloading the background processes (database server, web server, app server, etc...) to another full machine you free up your workstation to let you do the hardcore work. Also, if one dies / breaks / whatever you can still do it all on one machine, just like you were planning on originally.

      • I the realm of high perfomance laptops I'd have to throw in a mention for the top-of-the line Apple TiBook - 1Ghz G4, 60 gig drive, 1 gig ram, dvd-rw, only $3300 and .75 inches thinner than one of those Dells. ;) Depending on the needs of the orginal story poster (he wasn't terribly specific), it could be an attractive option.

  • Architecture? (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Are you confined to x86?
  • My name you see,
    Well it is Willabee,
    And I've been reluctant,
    To run KDE.

    I'm over weight (now that's phat!),
    I need Jeff Bates (that dirty rat!),
    To coreograph my cousins,
    Palastinian skipping routine.

    No, seriously. With RISC, you are liable for kipple, but I wouldn't recomend eating Bob Saget, cause he's an exotic young virile bitch. Phew, seems I've eaten enough Luxembourgian staplers for one afternoon, it's time to build an exruciating gumnut and assault my friend Rocko.

    • I'm really really sorry for the above post. It wasn't actually me. I'm at a LAN party and walked away for a few minutes. I don't actually know who did that yet. Mod it down if you have to...

      Damn. That's really annoying, I feel like an idiot.

      As for the question, I think the cheapest option is a modified laptop. Maybe with a totally new case (if you want to modify), and a new motherboard. I know there are alot of "Mini-PC" solutions around that may be able to support what you need, if you could only modify one to be portable with a monitor/periphs.

  • theres others like shuttles boxes..
    some gbox(?) named at least, and couple of others.

    here's an idea, use a normal midi tower(perhaps aluminum), but have a handle on it, AND store the keyboard, smallish lcd display, mouse&etc INSIDE the case for travel.
  • I read the headline with some interest, but then I saw that you're talking about a low-performance x86 based machine. They're all, even the 'fastest', between 66 and 233 MHz, you know. Unless you're running tiny apps that live inside the cache.

    I even had hope, as you talked about high speed I/O, but then I didn't see any mention of even 64 bit PCI slots.

    Oh well.

  • Powerbook G4 (Score:2, Interesting)

    by i0wnzj005uck4 ( 603384 )
    I don't know how much you're willing to spend, but the current entry-level titanium powerbook G4 supports 1Gig of ram, and they were running a promotion where if you buy it you can get double ram for 40$ more. If you don't like mac os x you can install yellowdog linux or any of the other ppc-happy linux distros. Someone above mentioned $2000 for a toshiba, and what I'm talking about will run you $2300 (about). Does that break the bank?
  • Too far off the mark to just use a laptop and virtual network your home machine?

  • Have you looked at Dolch? (Score:4, Informative)

    by Raetsel ( 34442 ) on Friday December 27, 2002 @09:01AM (#4965580)

    I used to see ads for Dolch [dolch.com] all the time when Byte was still a print magazine. I always thought they were a neat idea, since that was (pretty much) the only option if you wanted a portable computer that would take an osciloscope card.

    Fast forward to present times, and you have the FlexPac [dolch.com], a P4 portable with all the bells and whistles of a "desktop". (Yes, I know the page talks about P-IIIs, but their main page references P4 FlexPacs.)

    They were never cheap... but someone has to make these cases -- find their supplier! (I know, I know, that's what you're trying to do...) A nice case like Dolch is using (with an integrated LCD and keyboard) should be available for $1000 to $1500.

    If that approach fails, get thee to your local yellow pages, find a metal shop that does custom work, and have them build you one. Have it painted at an autobody shop -- perhaps a nice coat of Imron (epoxy paint -- very nice, very durable... but very nasty to work with!) and some clearcoat to protect it in those overhead bins.

    There are some very talented people out there, incredibly innovative and artistic, they just happen to be gearheads instead of geeks. Get to know your local machinist, you'll be surprised!

    Finally, I think the MicroATX form factor gives you more options than FlexATX does, though the FlexATX case options tend to pack things closer together (and thus be much smaller). For example, MicroATX allows 4 devices (generally 3 PCI and 1 AGP) vs. FlexATX's 2, and there are a lot more cases out there for the MicroATX size. I'd swear I've seen cases that include an LCD built-in, but I don't remember where I saw them right now... and my Google skills aren't kicking in.

  • If you change your specs slightly from "...I want a machine that will meet my needs for the next few years..." to "...I want a machine that will meet my needs now, knowing that I'll be upgrading in less than a year..." then you'll find a ton of options.

    A Dell precision laptop (such as the M50) will hold a gig of ram, has a UXGA display, and is essentially a desktop in a laptop form factor. The price is a paltry $2.5 k (for what you're asking for) and it'll resell next year for $2 k, so you'll be 'renting' a machine for $500 for a year.

    You'll want to upgrade in a year anyway, regardless of the machine you pick out now. A mid-range machine will keep its value longer than a high range machine (in the laptop world).

    Please don't forget that the shuttle and other small form factor PCs almost always trade performance for size and cost. An equivilant laptop will have equal or better performance, but will keep its value, and last longer.

    Lastly, desktops and desktop LCD screens are not meant for travel. If you look at the vibration specs alone you'll find that a laptop can take much more abuse than most LCDs and desktops. Trying to get a desktop machine with lcd and associated pieces through airport scanners without a lot of hassle (please turn on the computer and/or open the case of not only the computer, but the LCD and other parts which could possibly hold explosives or other lethal items). Putting it in baggage can be much worse (wear and tear, lost luggage, etc).

    So, in the end, I would strongly suggest you get what will work for you now, and leave the future to deal with itself. Even if you do get a tiny PC which holds 2g of ram, you'll still want a better PC this time next year when you want a processor that doesn't fit your MB.

    -Adam
    • I will second this suggestion. I believe no matter what you choose in the end, the life expectancy of the device should only be about a year. If you are a consultant, in the US and are using this for work, you can capitalize the expense each year giving you a full tax write-off (obviously at the loss of the cash difference). You can resell the old unit each year and you do all right. You will be taking a loss, because if you purchase the top-of-the-line product the cost of taking it out of the box is very high. Remember, this is a business expense--treat it like one.

      So the really important question is: do you really need this or would it make your life easier? What is the value to you of this convenience (the expected loss each year over the gain in your time). And can you get away with a powerful machine at home and a compromise machine for the road? (If your type of work allows it, you can even use your home machine on the road via ssh, VNC, Citrix, etc.)

      To answer your question better, it would help if you explained what the work was (in general). I would recommend the top of the line Apple TiBook, which can take 1GB of RAM and (if you write your own code or are doing work that involves PhotoShop, OpenGL, etc.) you get a benefit from the AltiVec unit. It probably doesn't have the best I/O available, but it is a very reasonable performance/usability compromise. I use one for consulting and complex simulation work. The development environment (Cocoa) and MacOS X are a bonus for me--but I dual boot into GNU/Linux for some work.

    • A Dell precision laptop (such as the M50) will hold a gig of ram, has a UXGA display, and is essentially a desktop in a laptop form factor. The price is a paltry $2.5 k (for what you're asking for) and it'll resell next year for $2 k, so you'll be 'renting' a machine for $500 for a year.

      The main problem with this is that this person may not want to deal with trying to sell his used laptop next year. I haven't seen to many retailers who are willing to accept trade-ins so there is an added cost of disposing of the old laptop to get that $500/year figure that you threw out there.

    • Just to add to the laptop comment the larger models from IBM (A series)and dell (inspiron 8200 and m50 and latitude c840) have two media bays in addition to holding the battery and the hard-drive, so you can get a cdrw/dvd drive and second hard-disk or second removeable media or second battery in the laptop at the same time...

      currently the mobile p4 goes out to 2.2ghz athlough some vedors such as alienware have laptops based on the desktop p4 that comes at the expense of battery life and thermal management issues in abig way. Most larger laptops come wth two dimm sockets so 1GB of ram is attainable in short order.

      if you need more or faster disks, using the ieee1394 port to connect a large external disk seems like a reasonable approach.
    • not everyone knows your friend Guido that can "guarantee" that sort of resale value. Most of us would be SELLING it for $500.
  • You're getting a lot of advice to buy a notebook PC instead of a compact machine for traveling, and I concur; among other things, while carrying a compact system unit wouldn't be so hard, current LCD monitors meant for desktops really aren't meant for travel, and you'd probably wind up busting it...

    If you have extra carrying capacity available, then I'd recommend you bring a full-sized keyboard and a good mouse. I'm guessing your biggest peeve with laptop PCs is they don't feel like a real machine. Add those two light and cheap peripherals and it'll feel much more solid.
    • Totally excellent call. I use a Dell Latitude C800 for work and have the Dell OEM of the Logitech iTouch wireless keyboard and mouse - one of the best I have used in a while (and I am a keyboard snob, still use an IBM 1391401 PS/2 keyboard on my other computers - built Tonka Tough)

      Wireless Keyboards Cheap [yahoo.com]
  • What are you doing to require so much I/O?

    Check out Tadpole's SPARC notebooks, some of which used to contain SCSI disk.

    There is this thing called the internet which, among other things, allows you to run hardware hungry applications on a remote server. Using it might help.

    Also, be warned that in order to use a small-form factor desktop like the shuttle, you really need to ship it with bulky and heavy shipping containers. The disks and other components are not going to handle shock well.

  • Tadpole Laptops (Score:3, Informative)

    by radon28 ( 593565 ) on Friday December 27, 2002 @10:07AM (#4965748)
    If you don't mind the high cost, Tadpole [tadpole.com] sells a variety of 32 & 64 bit SPARC laptops, some with a capacity for up to 4 gigs of RAM. It comes pre-loaded with Solaris. I think these are usually used by the military for on-field trajectory calculations.

  • Here's an idea (Score:3, Interesting)

    by afidel ( 530433 ) on Friday December 27, 2002 @10:38AM (#4965940)
    Buy any laptop with firewire built in, get a handfull of 7200 rpm firewire disks (or ide with firewire enclosures) and do software RAID of your choice on em. This should beat any other portable solution for I/O. Get a big honking Dell laptop with all the trimmings and you should have a laptop more powerfull than most people's desktops. Oh yeah and if you want to run them off the firewire's power be carefull almost none of the built in ports support power, to do that you would need one of the pc-card adapters that sucks power from elsewhere on the laptop.
    • Um. But even if you're doing software raid you're still not going to get more than 400mbit since that all firewire supports. For that matter you could get something with USB 2.0 (480mbit)
  • You say you need fast IO, but you don't say how fast. You say you need a big hard drive, but you don't say how big. You say you need it cheap and expandable, but we all know THAT's not happening. And you don't say what you consult for or what OS you require.

    For a preliminary suggestion, you could try the Micro PC [tomshardware.com], which appears to barely fit your requirements for power, and is small enough to be carried gingerly onboard in a padded case. A Powerbook might also be a good solution, but that is up to your OS needs... If you didn't need windows you should already own one anyway.

    But remember, whatever you get, it will be part of your image as a consultant. If you are a real techie, a custom-built box will impress. If you are an artistic type, you need a Powerbook or a Vaio, or another attractive, polished but original ultralight. If you are a pointy-haired executive who has greatly overestimated his needs, a half-sized mini vaio would be very sleek and sexy. Network guys seem to be able to get away with any type of box, the uglier the better.

    What are the needs that you are attempting to satisfy? What specs would satisfy those needs? If you don't tell us that, any advice you get here will be worthless.

    -C

    • >A Powerbook might also be a good solution, but that
      >is up to your OS needs... If you didn't need
      >windows you should already own one anyway.

      Even if you need windows, you can still use the Powerbook. My G4 running VirtualPC runs Win98SE fully networked to work's NT domain and net printers.

  • A Dell precision laptop (such as the M50) will hold a gig of ram, has a UXGA display, and is essentially a desktop in a laptop form factor. The price is a paltry $2.5 k (for what you're asking for) and it'll resell next year for $2 k, so you'll be 'renting' a machine for $500 for a year.

    The main problem with this is that this person may not want to deal with trying to sell his used laptop next year. I haven't seen to many retailers who are willing to accept trade-ins so there is an added cost of disposing of the old laptop to get that $500/year figure that you threw out there.

  • You might want to check out transportable computers for industrial use. They are a desktop PC with a LCD monitor built into a transportable case. They meet you spec at first glance and are very customizeable.
  • How about an Apple Titanium Powerbook [apple.com]?

    1GHz, 5.4 pounds, 3+ hours on a charge (my mileage, though Apple claims 5), reads and writes CD & DVD, firewire, Wi-Fi, bluetooth support, 56K modem, gig-ethernet, 60GB HD (4200 RPM, but they claim 26MB/sec sustained transfer max [outer edge], must be using variable sectors per track).

    Not bad when you can get out the door for about $3500.

  • Not sure of your exact requirements, But the Dell portable precision Workstation M50 is pretty nice. 15" UXGA LCD. GeForce Quadro4 to go video card. 5400 RPM 60gb hdd. 1 gig of ram, etc.
  • Pick up a 1U or 2U server box. Dual-proc, up to 4GB (more in Intel boxes) RAM, fast EIDE or SCSI drives, doesn't take up much room. Get one with side vents and you can used it like a normal desktop.

    Grab a thin LCD monitor, a nice keyboard and mouse.

    To travel, pack the monitor up against the case with some nice padding between the two and away you go. Everything should fit into a small suitcase or large briefcase.

    You get lots of power, but not much space is taken up. Plus, it will be much more upgradeable than a laptop ever will be. You won't be able to use it while travelling, but it won't be that difficult to travel with. :)
  • Have you looked at the IBM ThinkPads? I'm in a similar situation as you and I bought a ThinkPad A31p [ibm.com].
    • I got the A30 a while ago. Put in a second 30 Gig drive, and stuck in a Gig of RAM. Is it as fast as my desktop? Ummm, no. The drives are too slow (need to upgrade them soon). Does it fit the need? Yup, and quite well. It travels around the country in a nice leather shoulder bag (mostly plugged in, because I went for the extra drive, and not the batt).

  • Please think about the fact that when you are carrying your XPC onto the airplane, the airport security will likely to ask you to demonstrate that it works. You will need to switch it on. You will need an outlet and an LCD to do that. Isn't it going to be a little too much to carry all this around? Is it really worth the 10-15% (or even 30-40%) extra performance, as compared to a laptop?
  • If you don't mind running solaris, check this [nextcomeurope.com] out. Has an Ultrasparc IIe and takes up to a gig of ram. Great monitor as well. The thing is quick and has all the i/o throughput you could ask for.
  • ...could actually be a combination of these three things:
    1. An latop with the display you need (15" UXGA, etc, etc) - $2000?
    CPU, Disk and RAM don't matter.
    2. A small Compaq Evo e-PC [hp.com] with the computing power you need. - $683.00 onwards
    (P4 CPU, DDR, 2 GB RAM - you can upgrade the disk).
    The form factor is pretty small: 10"x10"x3.5" + a small power brick
    3. A VNC server (eg: TightVNC [tightvnc.org]) on your "server"
    and a VNC client on your laptop. Run the client full screen.
    You can also use Windows' built in terminal server if you're runing Microsoft.

    Plus you'd need some network connectivity (Wifi/Bluetooth/crossover cable) between your client and your server.

    This is a client/server setup at a (comparatively) cheap price, small enough for hand luggage (airport security won't hassle you if you checked the "server" in and carried your laptop in hand baggage). Plus you can use your laptop on the flight.

    If you hookup a second monitor to your "server"in the field, you can also use x2vnc [hubbe.net] (Linux) or Win2VNC [hubbe.net] (windows) to obtain a single dual-head "desktop". These programs allow you to use two screens on your two different computers as if they were connected to the same computer (single mouse and keyboard controls both and "jumps" at the screen border) You can also cut and paste between computers. Even if one is running Windows, and the other is running Linux. It's great - I use it at work in my "dual-head" XP/Linux setup.;-)

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