Low-Power Computing, On The Cheap

When I read this ZDNet blog post an idea began to form in my head.

My wife and I have been talking about selling my desktop and buying a laptop. Her concern is clearing some deskspace, because right now the desktop IS the only thing on the desk. She wants a more spartan look. I was going along with the idea as it made sense to save a few hundred on the electrical bill.

But then I read George Ou's post, and began toying with an interesting idea. Why not sell my desktop, build a PC based off the Intel D201GLY and use old parts I have lying around. The goal would be to get the same power savings at half the cost of a low-end laptop. The Celeron 215 processor included with the board runs at 1.33 GHz consuming around 27 watts. That's quite low compared to the usual 60+ watts of a desktop processor.

Running the numbers, I came up with the following options:

You'll notice the only thing different in all three options would be the LCD screen size. Price increased by roughly 800 pesos for each increase in screen size. I deliberately chose to go with a large hard drive as well. Three-and-a-half inch disks generally run faster and are sturdier that their mobile counterparts. The downside is that they eat more watts and produce more heat. I did not include the ATX case in the list as well, since I have a spare tower at home gathering dust. The small footprint of the board would have fit nicely with a micro-ATX case like the Focus Nemesis, but that would up the cost by 3,500 pesos. That's money better spent on something else.

Now the better equipped of the value niche in the laptop segment is usually in the 25,000-30,000 peso range. Compare that to the above, consider that the only constantly running power hog in that configuration would be the hard drive, and you've got yourself a comparable system at a little over half the price.

I'm going to wait for the D201GLY2 though, as that version of the board will use a 15-watt CPU and incorporate SATA support.

Here's more information about the board from Intel: Intel® Desktop Board D201GLY Overview

Libravox

The spirit of volunteerism has always amazed me. People find varied ways to contribute to the intellectual growth of others or of their communities. Prime examples would be Project Gutenberg and many Open Source projects. While browsing around the audiobooks in Manybooks.net, I downloaded a few and found Librivox. This is a boon for anyone into audiobooks. I'm not going to go into the value of audiobooks. Anyone who has tried them will give you different reasons why its useful to them or why they find it bad for lit in general.

As for me, I downloaded a few books. One of which I plan to let my son hear. I got the audio version of Poems Every Child Should Know from Kara Shallenberg's site. Maybe listening to them will have a positive effect on my son. Poetry is a beautiful thing to have in one's mind. It brings the mind and the heart together in a harmony that speaks to the soul.

Anyway, try it out. And while you're at it, subscribe to the Librivox podcasts. Oh, and you might as well use Gpodder or Jpodder to subscribe. Keep everything Open Source and support the them to encourage participation in these projects that benefit the public.

The Home Front

Stuff happening at work may have an effect on the way the wife and I use the home PC. I foresee an opportunity to pitch for linux in the homestead. This is just a blurb, pay no attention to it :-)

Treo 500v

Been a while since I've been excited about anything Palm has been releasing. I just found out about the European launch of the Treo 500v. And let me tell you I like the idea. The Palm user community has a healthy mix of opinion. A lot of long-time users decry this as another step towards failure for the company. Others like myself see this as Palm's way of extending it's market share to the bigger niche of traditional mobile phone users.

I think my wife will appreciate this device, however pared down it is. I love my Treo 650 and all, but the fact remains that the wife isn't impressed and she doesn't want a Palm at all. I emailed her about the Treo 500 and after talking to her about how its going to work she told me she would be "OK" with trying one out. Ah, finally! My chance to convert my wife to one of the Palm faithful.

PCLinuxOS

I've finally given in to my curiosity. Having had a conversation with a friend about PCLOS 2007, I decided to try it. I previously tried it back in version .93, but have not since. That was back when I just signed up for a broadband connection and I was distro-hopping every week or so. Back then, I would typically have 1 windows partition and 3 linux distros installed in a single 80GB hard drive. Mad, eh?

Well, after reading two months worth of PCLOS' Magazine, I was convinced to try it again. I'm now on the Live CD, surfing while Draklive preps my harddrive for another round of torture - LOL. Ooops! Gotta reboot, it's done now :-)