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Meet the 5-Watt, Tiny, fit–PC
Posted by
ScuttleMonkey
on Fri Oct 12, 2007 07:47 PM
from the where-the-watts-aren't dept.
from the where-the-watts-aren't dept.
ThinSkin writes "Meet the fit-PC, a tiny 4.7 x 4.5 x 1.5-inch PC that only draws 5-watts, consuming in a day less power than a traditional PC consumes in one hour. By today's standards, the fit-PC has very little horsepower, which makes it apt for web browsing and light applications; today's games need not apply. Loyd Case over at ExtremeTech reviews the fit-PC and puts it through its paces, noting that performance is not this PC's strength, but rather its small size and price tag of $285."
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slashvertisement (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:slashvertisement (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I do embedded stuff and I was interested for a few seconds...
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I'm all sorts of interested in this, especially with that kind of price point.
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... and the proof is here (Score:5, Funny)
Aaah, that explains why Linux is so big here
And why sex is speaken of so rarely.
Parent
Re:slashvertisement (Score:5, Insightful)
It's a strange coincidence that the things that geeks enjoy reading about are often products.
Parent
5 watts is good, can be better (Score:5, Insightful)
and you could have a lightweight VOIP phone that runs forever. Sweet. Solar power computer FTW!
Re:5 watts is good, can be better (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
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No point in this. Get a laptop! (Score:5, Interesting)
Laptops are really really cheap these days. I bought an Acer laptop for a family member, brand new from CompUSA, last month for $350 (It has an Intel CPU I forget which one). It will probably run circles around this thing and costs about the same (once you include the $40 shipping cost on fit PC) and consumes little additional power.
What is the point of this fit PC again?
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There's no such thing as a Pentium 4 Celeron! Pentium 4, or Celeron, but not both...
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Requirements: Low power consumption. Low noise. Enough juice to run a decent web browser. Linux-compatible. Cheap.
Being fed up with VIA, I first looked to laptops. Power consumption about 20 Watts, good. Need to be a bit more careful about the noise, but you can find quiet laptops no problem. Any laptop probably smokes the SP8000E performa
I'm Depressed (Score:5, Funny)
True, my laptop's 5 years old. But STILL! I'm now in the process of trying to talk my wife into letting me upgrade.
BTW: yes, works great for going online and writing non-graphical programs. (web sites, CLI) But useless for most action games. Tomb Raider plays fine on it though.
This does point in the right direction (Score:3)
Fantastic for solar setups (Score:4, Interesting)
Imagine... (Score:3, Funny)
mobile-itx and pico-itx are better IMHO (Score:3, Informative)
Not $285; try $325. Go VIA instead... (Score:5, Interesting)
Another lovely company that tricks you with outrageous shipping costs [fit-pc.com] to artificially drop the "price" of the computer. Also, check out the super friendly support and warranty policies [fit-pc.com].
Do yourselves a favor and get a VIA-based mini-itx board for that kind of money.
Seems you can get a VB7001G (1.5Ghz) for about $130; add in $30 for 512MB of ram (2x the fitPC), and however much you feel like spending on a compactflash card, USB memory key, or smaller laptop drive. Say, $50 for a 60GB drive (more than the fitPC's 40). $40 for a picoPSU; $30 for a AC adapter. Buy a crap case for $30 if you don't have one you can use already. Install a gigabit NIC for under $20 (dunno if there are any cheap dual-interface gigabit NICs.) That's under $310, and quite a bit more bang for the buck. It probably won't be 5w, but it'll be well under 20w given that board seems to use about 10w.
If you want to go even cheaper, intel is fighting back against via, like with the D201GLY. It's $70, 1.3ghz celeron, DDR2 ram...
You had me ... (Score:4, Informative)
Too bad, this thing would make an absolutely kickass DOS machine. (I'm serious! As long as the BIOS does USB/PS2 keyboard emulation.)
Asus Eee PC (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't believe it'll ever actually be sold at that pricepoint either (without at least needing to know a direct sales contact within Asus).
I actually am interesting in purchasing a few dozen units, though...
Soekris (Score:3, Informative)
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Re:Compare it with... (Score:5, Interesting)
Tiny-PC: 500Mhz Geode
Looks like about an eighth the processor and a quarter the RAM, for more than a third of the price.
Parent
Re:Compare it with... (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Compare it with... (Score:5, Informative)
If you're comparing them based on the amount of RAM or processor speed you're being a little less than "eminently logical".
Parent
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My PPC Mac Mini (Score:3, Informative)
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Don't get me wrong, I think the Fit-PC is an interesting and has its uses but, in my opinion, saying it's cheaper compared to the Mac Mini misses the point altogether.
Mac Mini starts at $599, fit-PC starts at $285. Fit-PC is cheaper, period. No "point" to be missed; one is cheaper than the other.
What you seem to be trying to say is that Mac Mini is better value for money, but value depends on what you're using it for.
If you need the lowest possible power consumption, space, and the widest range of operating temperatures, then Fit-PC is better value for money.
If you need a normal PC for regular users, but you want to think that it's a special PC for special users,
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There are other models and they can all be configured somewhat, too. What you get from MadTux is bigger and uses more power, but it's a lot more computer for the money. It's also vastly more expandable.
If you really need silent, low-power, and small, this FitPC is quicker than building your own EPIA case but not as fun. There are lots
Re:Compare it with... (Score:4, Informative)
Definitely. Though for many broadband setups you do not need the second ether because you can use a PPTP, PPPoE or L2TP relay if supported on the modem.
As far as the article is concerned it is a demo how not to use such a system. What a bunch of clueless wankers.
Xterm, pulseaudio (reminds me I should put the instructions for setting it on my website) and run the damn thing diskless booting over the network. All of my machines in the house run this way booting of a dedicated server which holds the disk space and runs the applications. Even the laptop when in the house is booted this way and not off its own disk. As a result even something as slow as a Transmeta @800 or Via@400 is more than enough. My firewall and my development boxes also operate this way. I have used this approach for nearly 5 years now and while it takes some effort to setup the maintenance is many times less compared to anything else. You set it once and after that it just works.
Parent
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Re:Compare it with... (Score:5, Interesting)
Of course, I know which one I'd take, if given the choice. For my money, getting a 5w computer is kinda pointless when I'm expected to hook it up to a desktop LCD which could easily use more than 10 times that much power.
Just for giggles, here's a point by point comparison:
5 watt PC vs iPhone/iPod Touch
$285 and up vs $299 and up
AMD Geode LX800 CPU @ 500 MHz vs ARM @ ~620Mhz
256 MB DDR (non expandable) vs 128MB? (non expandable)
40 GB 2.5" Hard disk vs 4,8 or 16 GB flash drive
Dual 100 Mbps Ethernet vs 802.11b/g, plus GSM/EDGE on iPhone
SXGA controller, 640x480 to 1920x1440 vs 320x480 built in multi-touch display and 480i or 576i video out
Two USB 2.0 high speed ports vs iPod dock port
Speaker and microphone interface vs Speaker and microphone built i on iPhone, plus headphone/mic jack
RS-232 serial port via RJ11 connector vs none
Single 5V supply, 3-5 watt, fanless vs battery operated, fanless?
120 x 116 x 40 mm, 450 gram vs 115 x 61 x 11.6mm 135g iPhone or 110 x 61.8 x 8mm 120g iPod
Parent
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Re:Compare it with... (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
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I had been wondering when a tiny computer with 2 ethernet ports and decent CPU would come out... Too bad I've not got a router I really like and no real reason to mess with it now.
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Some years [soekris.com] ago? The only advantage I see to this unit is that it's black (instead of green), and it offers video output, none of which may or not be useful or appropriate.
That said, it's good to see other product offerings in the market.
my Fit-PC experience (Score:5, Informative)
I expected at least a serial terminal out of the box so that I wouldn't have to plug in a display. It has an RS232 port (via RJ11 jack and adapter cable), and it is a semi-embedded little box. However they didn't enable it in
It does come with Gentoo out of the box (not sure why they picked that distribution), with KDE (ugh) and some various other software. I used UNetbootin (http://lubi.sourceforge.net/unetbootin.html) to install Ubuntu via the network, because the BIOS that shipped on my Fit-PC didn't have working PXE boot (they've since fixed that). Afterward, I enabled the serial console and SSH server, configured the network interfaces, installed the applications I needed (SVN server) and stashed the Fit-PC somewhere and forgot about it, as I had originally intended.
Overall, I like the Fit-PC, but I wish they had taken more care with the out-of-box experience and even the PC itself (the reset button, for example, is not exposed, and there's no soft-power way to shut the thing off since it has no other buttons). I do like the dual network interfaces, RS232, and low power and quiet operation, but there are tons of other similar Geode-based boxes out there, so this isn't too unique.
Finally, the Geode is going away. I wonder what the next semi-embedded x86 chip of choice will be.
Parent
Re:For router use (Score:5, Informative)
Why? What Internet connection do you have that would come close to maxing out even a 10Mb connection? How many hundreds of machines do you have on your home network that would requires a Gigabit on the inside port?
PCs come with Gigabit Ethernet connections these days because the cost difference is negligible. Having two 100MB ports provides more than enough bandwidth for average home use and may save some power which is the point of this machine.
Parent
Re:For router use (Score:5, Insightful)
Huh!? So, you are going to get a 5W box so you can hook it up to your 16-disk SAN and save on power?
Parent
Re:For router use (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
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And yes, I know you were trolling, but I can never resist feeding them these days.
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It's also kind of overkill for my app. It's got a bunch of SW preloaded, which has some kind of cost in installation/maintenance even if it's FOSS. It's got QXGA display, which I don't need, kbd/mouse ports (in addition to USB), and the 4GB Flash is costs a