Linux Boxen with Small Footprint? 17
st. augustine asks this question which I'm sure
many of you still in dorms might find useful:
"I'm going to be moving into a very small dorm room in a
few months and every square inch of space is going to be at
a premium. I'd like a small Linux box and I want decent
price/performance -- a year or two ago a Cobalt Qube or
Corel Rebel.com Netwinder looked okay,
but paying $1000 for one of these puppies just doesn't
seem reasonable when you can get an AMD box that's twice
as fast for $400. Only problem is that the AMD box is the
size of a refrigerator, and I'm going to need that space
for a refrigerator. Any suggestions?" Ah, yes,
I remember the days of living in closets
dorm rooms. Does anyone have any pointers?
Look up! (Score:1)
I don't know if it can work for you, but I found in all my dorm rooms that while floor space was at a premimun, there was plenty of space in the upper half of the room. Many dorms have 10 foot ceilings (not all), and that means typically about 5 feet is wasted. Build some shelves. Put the computer above the refridgerator. (careful of cooling issues of course)
Re:Look up! (Score:1)
The compressor can really wallop your system!!
Computer in a Keyboard (Score:1)
--
http://www.wholepop.com/ [wholepop.com]
Whole Pop Magazine Online - Pop Culture
Computer in a keyboard - take 2 (Score:1)
--
http://www.wholepop.com/ [wholepop.com]
Whole Pop Magazine Online - Pop Culture
Re:Two Words (Score:2)
The possibilities of stacking low profile computers . . . and they consume so little power! I'm sure you can cluster a bunch of them for small jobs through the parallel port and a ethernet jack on one...
Try the Sahara or Safari boxes (Score:1)
http://www.interpromicro.com
Two Words (Score:1)
Seriously, see if you can get your folks to chip in for a laptop or something. It takes up like no space (the same amount of desktop space as a small monitor) and you can take it with you, very handy.
-- A wealthy eccentric who marches to the beat of a different drum. But you may call me "Noodle Noggin."
Boy, I sure was grateful for my dorm closet (Score:1)
No, this is not an off topic post, so don't mod me down! If you were like me you were too bloomin' poor to have a 'real' computer. This was before the goodness of Linux. So listen carefully - this is what you need to do..
Every school I know of has a 'surplus' office, where they send there unwanted equipment. So check there first. What you want to find is one of those 'pizza box' computers that were popular with many schools because of their space saving properties. Well, now they have to send them away because of Windoze bloated code.
A local school is selling them for $25 - $50. Some local computer shop recently had a garage sale and 'gave' me a couple rather than haul them back in at the end of the day. Another shop has a 'dollar bin' for isa cards that they toss in when they do upgrades. (Found a dollar sound card). Yet another shop had a cheap $5.00 dx4 100 overdrive proccessor for sale. (yes, scrounging a'la cheapo is in my blood - I'm a nerd, I can't help it).
From the same surplus office I picked up a gateway 15' crystal scan like new - $30 - I have seen them around for as low as $20, and free if u -fix, not too hard if you have a couple you can swap boards with. So you could do it for $75, or even less.
Why bother? my fellow slashdotters may ask. You get a true minimum footprint computer. You will find it easier/cheaper to upgrade and maintain in the long run. You will appreciate it more. You can use all the money you save on spring break or a used laptop. It's just the principal of the thing. I mean, if a Jedi has to make his own light saber, shouldn't a nerd make his own computer???
Re:Two Words (Score:1)
I bought one for a 4th computer, and I'm not too sure anymore, as long as you get a separate keyboard, mouse, and monitor. Avoid docking stations unless you need a game port for games or something, and even then you can hook a PSX, SNES, or TG-16 controller up to the parallel port without needing a docking station.
My Toshiba has VGA, PS2, serial and parallel ports on it, so it's not a big deal.
However, with 3 full machines I find that I never use it anymore, probably because of the paltry 8MB RAM, the fact that I have no ethernet card in it and I have my own computer at school (SuSE 6.1, baby). Actually, it's on top of my cable modem right now with a full charge and a harddrive of pure streaming Slack.
I may be getting a couple of monitors soon so I'll probably set it up and use it a little more (gotta have one in every room).
Wow, I left this message in limbo before I went downtown (where the hooch is) so I'm posting it many hours after wrote it (a disadvantage of having multiple computers). So I'm forgetting what I wrote and simply submitting it.
Here goes...
No, Really Two Words this time: (Score:1)
He was talking about a budget solution. (I'm currently looking for something similar)
Any decent laptop will cost 1000+.
Tiny footprint (Score:1)
Some have Intel 233MMX procs, 32MB of RAM, and a 2.1+ GB hard drive... I think they might include a CD-ROM as well...
The company advertises these computers on the print version of InfoWorld [http://www.infoworld.com].
I don't remember the name of the company, but if it comes to me, I'll post it!
Small foot print PC's (Score:1)
Well, I too have been looking for an inexpensive small footprint system and here is what I have come up with:
Microworkz - they are offering a $200 dollar system with 32M ram, 2.1G HD, Intel 266Mhz Processor. Worst case you load up the IDE hard drive with OS source files on another computer, then put it back in the Microworkz case and load it up! It looks like a really small system in the photos - no CD, no floppy, tiny!
Build your own - I went out to www.pricewatch.com and did a search for NLX and found links to NLX cases for between $53 and $70.00. Be careful - some NLX cases will use a regular CD-ROM, others require very expensive notebook/slimline CD drives.
The NLX motherboards are awfully expensive - but at least they include everything.
An Asus Socket 7 NLX board with built in sound, video, and lan is $168 at www.techstore.com
An Asus
An Asus LX chipset NLX board with built in sound, video and network is $170 - that is a killer deal. I believe they are using an Intel 10/100 integrated nic - nice card, nice features, I have about 10 of them
An Asus BX board for $250 - to pricey for my needs.
FIC, Gigabyte, and MSI also make NLX boards.
NLX systems are very, very small. They have 2 expenasion slots (PCI). The motherboards slideout of the case for ease of management. It is a spec aimed at the "NetPC" market. I have used, installed, and managed NetPCs - diskless, cd-less systems in a business and environment and it was great. The units I used were made by Intel (whole system made by Intel). The company I was out receceived them through a special deal with Intel - so they are regretfully not available to my knowledge (they were very expensive too).
What I suggest is the Asus LX chipset NLX board with the $70 case that supports regular CD-ROM drives. Pop in a Celeron and woohoo! The systems only have ATI Rage 2 cards, so you will need to add a Voodoo2 if you game - but those are being blown out for $50 on the web.
If you are in a real space bind, shop around carefully for an inexpensive electronic KVM - keyboard, video, monitor switch. I have friends that have picked up 4 port switches for $100 (cables NOT included). KVMs allow you to attach mutliple PC's to one monitor, keyboard, and mouse. The electronics switches switches prevent blown ports and ensure that the systems always detect a mouse and keyboard. I've got 2 8-port units and 1-4 port unit. They rock.
Good luck!
Sony Vaio (Score:1)
click [sony.com]