linuxdevices.com — A Taiwanese company is selling a tiny Linux-powered mini PC that has a consumer electronics look-and-feel for $99, quantity one. Seems like a neat platform for a wide range of specialized applications and projects.
Sep 28, 2006 View in Crawl 4
goblinkillerSep 28, 2006
Kickass music player, low-traffic webserver, fileserver, printerserver etc. I really like the idea of small cheap but real computers with which I can make my very own serverservice, music player etc. My fantasy then becomes the limit practically...
sweetnjguy29Sep 28, 2006
200MHz x86-compatible for $100???? Are you kidding me? For a hundred bucks, you could get a used Pentium III 733MHz Desktop with a monitor.
kremvaxSep 28, 2006
For the most part, I think a current windows (xp, etc) would run like is sick pig on one of these boxes. Windows is targeted for a machine with more ram and a faster cpu.By design Linux has a lot more inherent configuration flexibility , and can be very nicely configured to run on slower boxes with less ram overhead. And the cost... If they had to bundle a windows license with this box, it would almost double the cost. Linux, free as in beer.So ... a $100 linux box is real. $100 windows box... still hasn't been done.
nogoodnamesleftSep 28, 2006
TS-1000?The TS - 1000 (U.S. version of the Sinclair ZX81) came with *2* kilobytes of memory as standard. It had a black-and-white display, and no hi-res graphics, just a 32 x 22 character display which used "checkerboard" characters to support a low-res 64 x 44 pseudo-graphical display. (And that was back when "high resolution" was 256 x 192 upwards.)It used an ordinary cassette player to load/save programs (and you had to supply that yourself).By today's standards, it's indescribably *slooooooow*.It was bloody great value at the time, and the first computer I used (or more specifically, the ZX81 was), but.... it's not that great a comparison.And U.S. prices have more than doubled since then; consider what $200 will buy you today. Tech is *dirt cheap* nowadays.
mikecermSep 28, 2006
Love the form-factor, but this is hardly useful as a PC. 200 MHz isn't enough to browse the web these days. For $200-300 you can get a normal tower from Compaq or Dell, with a 2 Ghz Sempron, 256 MB RAM, 80 GB hard drive, CD-RW/DVD-ROM driver. Such a computer would be more than twice as useful as the little Linux box. If you're going to get this thing to use as a router, why not just get a $50 WRT54GL?
raynevandunemSep 28, 2006
I think that the lack of a hard drive for this PC calls for an alternative approach. I'd suggest using a virtual drive (like GDrive or GSpace via Gmail) via some Internet connection (wifi, for example), or (as with the MadTux LivePC) a USB card, for this type of PC if you want to store files or apps. The Internet will become increasingly cheaper as time goes by, so a PC that uses an online, web-based drive rather than a local hard drive case will have more going for it.And I am *especially* glad that someone finally broke the US$100 barrier that holds many people (especially in the Third World and digitally-disadvantaged areas) back from buying a PC. Hopefully, more will show up for less before the decade runs out.
lyzzSep 28, 2006
Try streaming media off of a 12mbps connection sometime. It's not a good deal. You do realize that it's only 1.5 megabytes per second right? I am actually running an IpCop firewall using usb 1.1 nics, and let me say that it's dog slow on file transfers. For the internet connection it might be alright, but using it to transfer data from a dmz to a lan has serious speed issues. Bottom line, don't use usb 1.1 attached nics on a firewall box.
ldogSep 28, 2006
@Iyzz>>Try streaming media off of a 12mbps connection sometime. It's not a good deal. What type of media? Real time HD video?You can fit over 90 simultaneous realtime 128kbps mp3 audio streams through a 12mbps connection.Like I said, use the USB for the WAN side. 12Mbps is about 10 T1 lines, which is more than most home users have. The unit in this article has an onboard 10/100 for the LAN side.Don't know what ISP is allowing higher streaming than would be available through a 1.5 megaBYTE/s connection. Sure there's probably some out there, but nothing close to affordable in my part of the country.
technopunditOct 1, 2006
Try the nearest yard sale. About 20 dollars.
raffyOct 1, 2006
Yes, thanks - Puppy Linux is able to do that now. See the barebones version <a class="user" href="http://puppylinux.org/user/downloads.php?cat_id=1">http://puppylinux.org/user/downloads.php?cat_id=1</a> to which HV3 browser may be added <a class="user" href="http://www.murga.org/~puppy/viewtopic.php?t=8617&start=16">http://www.murga.org/~puppy/viewtopic.php?t=8617&start=16</a> or try the CLI <a class="user" href="http://www.murga.org/~puppy/viewtopic.php?t=11361">http://www.murga.org/~puppy/viewtopic.php?t=11361</a>
pt1000Jan 8, 2007
From what I've read, you can't schedule/record using mvpmc. I'm not sold on it being a replacement for a MythTV frontend unless I can actually schedule recordings. I mean that's the whole point isn't it?