Meet the 5-Watt, Tiny, fit–PC

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."

Lame

[644bd346996]

No flash. Fewer USB ports than the XO-1. Lame.

(And Gentoo? WTF!?)

Re:Compare it with...

[Anonymous Coward]

You can compare it with the Zonbu http://www.zonbu.com/home/index.htm/ [zonbu.com] . The Zonbu PC has no HD, just 4 GB of flash and online storage (for a fee). The Fit-PC has a 40 GB HD; similar pricing for the hardware.

Re:slashvertisement

[heinousjay]

The line appears to be: if there's a chance anyone anywhere made a buck from something, it's gotta be evil.

Re:For router use

[ashitaka]

it needs at least one gigabit port.

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.

mobile-itx and pico-itx are better IMHO

[josepha48]

while they may not be as small as this, they offer more flexibility as 256M RAM is not really going to run Win XP very well is it?

Re:5 watts is good, can be better

[Anonymous Coward]

I've worked with these Geode-based 'miniboxes' during my day job for the past year or so. Max power draw is more than 5W, but it's not as bad as you make it. The Geode's TDP is 3.5W IIRC, though in average (i.e. not encoding video) use it's more like 1.0-1.5W. The HDD draws ~2.5W while seeking, but 1W while it's idle. The RAM + other goodies on the motherboard are ~1.5W. Even if you plugged in 5W of USB devices you'd still be looking at a total power draw of 10W under all but the heaviest loads. Measured at the wall it's a little higher due to PSU efficiency, but nowhere near the 2x factor you claim - more like 30%.

Re:No point in this. Get a laptop!

[CastrTroy]

I agree. I bought a $CDN 450 laptop a couple months ago. Loaded Mandriva on it and it runs very snappy. When I'm running under a regular load it consumes about 20 watts. That's for a 1.6 GHz P IV Celeron, with an Intel 950 GMA. Much more useful than what you get with this fit PC. Plus you can bring a laptop with you, and use it at the coffee shop and such. I don't imagine you can do the same with this one.

Re:Not that slow.

[644bd346996]

800Mhz is plenty when you have (relatively) huge caches and fast RAM, as well as the headroom of being able to triple your speed on demand. Have you tried actually limiting the Athlon to 800Mhz? You'll start noticing some really long pauses, especially if you take out all but one of your RAM modules. With a 500Mhz P3 and more 384Mb RAM, Firefox is sluggish even on simple web sites.

Re:forget today's games

[arashi no garou]

Actually, yes, because it is a lightweight PC. If you bother to read the article, you'll see that the company provides Windows drivers and you can indeed install Windows on it. The point of the device is not gaming though, it's light internet use or any of a dozen other things small-form-factor computers are good for.

And yes, I know you were trolling, but I can never resist feeding them these days.

You had me ...

[KC1P]

... until I saw the shipping cost. $95?!

Too bad, this thing would make an absolutely kickass DOS machine. (I'm serious! As long as the BIOS does USB/PS2 keyboard emulation.)

Re:Lame

[value_added]

I had been wondering when a tiny computer with 2 ethernet ports and decent CPU would come out.

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

[gradedcheese]

Ooh, I have one of these, and it's kind of a mixed bag. The people who make them don't really seem to have enough Linux experience to really set this thing up so that it makes sense out of the box, definitely buy it only if you're planning to reinstall Linux on it.

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 /etc/inittab. Damn. On to Ethernet though, surely it ships with an ssh server running out of the box? Nope. On to plugging in a keyboard and display...

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.

Asus Eee PC

[PineHall]

The Asus Eee PC [asus.com] is a sub-notebook with a better CPU and a minimum of 2GB of solid state disk space. Prices in the US start at $269.

Re:Fanless

[dws90]

Zonbu [zonbu.com]

That looks like it has most everything you want.

Aleutia

[Anonymous Coward]

There is a similar-looking computer that uses 1.8 watts called Aleutia [aleutia.com].

Re:Compare it with...

[kestasjk]

Comrade! We have detected you using mathematics and logic to stop an anti-Apple tirade! Please be advised: this is Slashdot. Apple sells only massively overpriced hardware. Pointing out that Apple sells something equivalent to its actual value, instead of the fantasy-land price that internet geeks believe it should cost (id est, free) is double-plus-ungood. We here at the Ministry for Nerdy Indignation hope that you will reconsider your eminently logical position and join with us in our outrage that Apple does not price their products at Mom's Basement prices. Thank you.

The Mac Mini uses 110W, the fit-PC uses 5W, the Mac Mini is 6.5x6.5x2 inches, the fit-PC is 4.2x4.2x1.5 inches, the Mac Mini is produced on a relatively massive scale compared to the fit-PC, the Mac Mini works at 10-35C, the fit-PC works at 0-70C.

If you're comparing them based on the amount of RAM or processor speed you're being a little less than "eminently logical".

Re:Compare it with...

[tsa]

Good point; according to Apple my new iMac uses 280 W max., but in practice it's more like 120 W. Which is quite low compared to my old PC + 19" CRT, who did a nice 225 W together.

Soekris

[FranTaylor]

Soekris [soekris.com] has a whole lineup of single-board machines with this processor. The prices are pretty reasonable, and they have cases and a some accessories. Netgate [netgate.com] makes wireless hardware kits for Soekris aystems. Soekris made the hardware for the MIT RoofNet project.

Re:Compare it with...

[Anonymous Coward]

The Mac Mini uses 110W

My (ppc) Mini uses around 25W. 110W must be the rating of the power supply, or usage with all USB and Firewire ports in use doing a disk and cpu intensive task.

Re:Compare it with...

[arivanov]

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.

Power Ratings

[Anonymous Coward]

I wish I had modpoints for left the parent! All power supplies are classified with their MAXIMUM power output. If all the PCs in the world were using all the rated watts of their power supplies this would be a much less green world. 110W on the supply Box are on the cautionary side, it's very likely the Mac mini uses normally around a quarter of that (It's mostly made out of notebook components afterall). Eiapoce as AC

My PPC Mac Mini

[cwerdna]

My PPC 1.25 ghz G4 Mac Mini draws ~14W at idle and ~31W when its CPU is maxed about by distributed.net RC5 client. I measured this w/my Kill A Watt (http://www.p3international.com/products/special/P4400/P4400-CE.html).

Re:5 watts is good, can be better

[mrcgran]

flash (ssds) uses less power than harddisks. you don't need to spin flash memories while you are not reading them, or move other mechanical parts while reading. see e.g. http://www.sandisk.com/Corporate/PressRoom/PressReleases/PressRelease.aspx?ID=3732 [sandisk.com] "Power efficiency. SanDisk SSDs have minimal power requirements, with savings rated at over 50 percent compared with a hard disk drive -- 0.9 watts during active operation versus 1.9 watts7."

Re:Compare it with...

[mollymoo]

Idle on a laptop hard drive is typically around 0.5-1W, peaking at 2-3W during writes. Spin up could consume 5W on its own, albeit briefly. The CPU only uses 0.9W, so I don't think 5W would be an unreasonable number for normal operation.

Re:No point in this. Get a laptop!

[islanduniverse]

P IV Celeron

There's no such thing as a Pentium 4 Celeron! Pentium 4, or Celeron, but not both...

Re:Fanless

[Doc Ruby]

Thanks, that's a decent approximation. However, it costs $249 if you don't subscribe to their Internet service (their real business), or $338 if you subscribe and immediately cancel [zonbu.com], while the service costs $13:mo for 2 years minimum (cancelable) prepaid.

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 about $30 (though power saving), which could probably buy a 40GB SATA HD - $15 buys 20GB SCSI HDs. Even the CF slot is probably a few extra unnecessary bucks.

I bet that the $249 is full of not only profit, but also higher to balance the loss of profit from the network business. And the extra HW could be another $50-75. If this box, stripped down, could sell for $100-150, then it would be exactly what I want. As long as I can telnet into it and force it to install Linux from across the ethernet.

Meanwhile, the Gumstix waysmall 200 [gumstix.com] is almost exactly what I want, for $129, but no soundchip. All the cheaper Gumstix have client-only USB, so can't take expansions. Though the $186 200xm-cf has CompactFlash, into which soundcards or CF/USB adapters can plug. And the waysmall 400m-bt has Bluetooth, which might send audio data to Bluetooth speakers or audio adapter, which could be even better, for only $200. But the audio module is $40, and the USB host module is $27, so $197 does get me all I want. Even if the extra $52 for the Zonbu gets a lot more (in a larger package). I wonder whether the Zonbu has 25% more processing power.

Since Gumstix is so close, there's probably a competitor. My app is basically an "ethernet to stereo/5.1/7.1 audio" adapter, which has got to be a popular app (at least a . Probably there's one that has either soundchip or just USB host (for external DAC), with options for either ethernet or WiFi. For under $200, if not yet under $150.

Re:Compare it with...

[mr_mischief]

So go to MadTux [madtux.org] and get a real PC for less. 512MB of RAM, 16x DVD+-RW, 80 GB hard drive, Vector Linux installed, and 60 days of email support for $281.99 with a Sempron 3000+.

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 of PC/104 and EBX systems out there that don't cost much more. It appears that this is very similar to what Ampro, Winsystems, Via, and others are already doing, but at a good price. EMAC's PCM-5893 [emacinc.com] isn't much more in single unit quantities.

It looks like they (Compulab) are making the boards themselves since they are SBC builders. In quantity they probably could get close to these final prices by OEMing the boards and sticking them in project cases.

This PC is actually a rebranding of the ENC-iGLX [compulab.co.il] it seems. You can also buy just the innards [compulab.co.il] from Compulab, too. If you don't mind XScale instead of Geode and can handle 312Mhz, they have a system with 1 ethernet and wifi for $199 [compulab.co.il].

Gumstix is much more interesting IMO, but this is a nice little box as far as PC compatibles go.

Re:That website is......

[piranha(jpl)]

If you're not interested in the current layout, where 1.5 pages of content (printed) is expanded across four separate web pages, with a layout/ads/bullshit to content ratio of about 5, try the printable version [extremetech.com]—the web's best kept secret.