On Sat, Jan 06, 2007 at 04:23:57PM +0000, Digby Tarvin wrote: > On Fri, Jan 05, 2007 at 03:44:34PM -0800, Andrew Sackville-West wrote: > > On Fri, Jan 05, 2007 at 06:40:13PM -0500, Roberto C. Sanchez wrote: > > > On Fri, Jan 05, 2007 at 03:08:42PM -0800, Andrew Sackville-West wrote: > > > > Hi list, > > > > > > > > I've got to put in an additional system at work with a high-level of > > > > USB support (camera's, ugh). I'm looking for something that is a > > > > pretty small form factor as space is a definite consideration. I came > > > > > > I have an iBox Slim I got from iDot (http://www.idotpc.com) which is > > > very nice, small and quiet. However, if I had it to do over, I'd get > > > the iBox Crystal, which has space for two hard drives (the slim has > > > space for only one), space for a regular optical drive (the slim > > > requires a notebook style optical drive) and does not require a stand > > > for vertical placement (since the crystal is rather square in profile). > > > > yeah, that looks nice. Do you have the flash drive option? and if so, > > can you boot off the thing? > > I have been using the A4F machines which are also mini-ITX based > computers: > http://www.mappit.de/a4fsite_englisch/ > Plus points were that they were available in a solid state configuration > (no flash, fans or other moving parts) and could be bought without Windows > pre-installed. > > However for a really small formfactor and low price, I have recently > been experimenting with the sumo thin client: > http://wmltd.co.uk/index.php/products/nomachine_thin_client > which has a AMD Geode GX533 or LX800 Processor. I am using the 1GB > flash version with 100GB USB disk, but can be fitted with internal > HDD. It has 4 USB ports and comes with Linux (Foundry) pre-installed > as an embedded system for thin client use (xterm etc). I did a Debian > install on the USB drive without a problem. > > If you really want very small formfactor, silent operation and low power, > they seem very good. But probably not ideal for demanding applications > like video compression. >
A couple more good options, thanks. I've been doing some load testing using motion and a simple, cheap usb webcam. It seems pretty minimal. I can barely see the cpu monitor on my panel flicker when it fires up. I haven't checked it with tops yet, but it seems promising. I think I can probably run 4-5 of these off one little mini-itx box with ease. I probably won't even bother with the hard rive and just use nfs shares on another machine to store the video. for those interested, I found a nice little bit of mini=itx stuff at www.damnsmalllinux.org/store the prices aren't the best, but it does support a debian based project... A
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