Re: lower power PCs

["Robert Green" <ROBERT_GREEN1963@xxxxxxxxx>]

"Lewis Gardner" <lgardner@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:483efdb2$0$4969$d94e5ade@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Robert Green wrote:
>
> > I am seriously thinking of using a laptop with an identical spare.
> > With a USB hub and 1TB external drives, there's little I
> > can't do except add expansion cards.
>
> Use a Dell D series laptop and a D/Dock and you can have one half-height
> standard PCI slot.

As I said, (-: - you can't add cardS.  But yes, you can get at least a half
height card in that base station, as well as some others.  The problem I
have found is that the card I most wanted to add was usually a better video
card and they were typically not only not half height, many were full
height, full length and double width.  However, most home servers can get by
with a modern laptop's video card and many laptops have some impressive
video capabilities, particularly the ability to power dual monitors
simultaneously.

> A D600 and D/Dock should cost around $400 on eBay. Lots of bang for the
> buck!

That's not bad considering they were well over $2K when new, IIRC and they
still have plenty of CPU HP and life left in them.

> No need for a spare since parts are as common as dirt. But if you
> decide to have a spare the swappable drive caddys on the D series would
> allow you to use the spare as a normal laptop and simply swap drives if
> needed.

Some of the laptops I've seen have had caddyless designs and are able to
take a COTS 2'5" drive and just drop it in after pulling two screws.  I
prefer them to the caddy units just under the principle of one less custom
interface issue and cost.  If you watch rebates, sales and such, you can get
some awesome laptops deals because so many of them are pushed back onto the
resale market by "fleet users."

Another benefit of the laptop route I forgot to mention was the relatively
monolithic nature of the hardware.  Thousands of users were all using the
same HD, video card, network card, USB hub etc because they all came with
the machine, some even on the motherboard.  This means, at least IMHO, that
problems that are truly HW issues get isolated a lot more quickly because
everyone's got the same test bench.  It seems that Unix drivers appear in
batches for laptops - that once the stock components are identified, support
quickly follows.  I'm certainly no expert there, and perhaps a Unix guru
might confirm or deny my impressions.

However, I am really in it for the power savings and because I found a used
laptop vendor on Ebay that really understands and supports what he sells.
Going to a laptop server I drop the cost of keeping 4 big 12V gel cells on
constant charge and the expense and harm to environment of the lead within.
I also ditch the big PC power supply because it's common to the built-in
laptop "UPS" (either a LIon or NiMH battery) and the PC.  The wattage
readings for keeping a modern 2GHz laptop with USB drives running as a
server versus a 300MHz dual tower with far less (although more redundant)
disk space will probably astound me.  Electrical costs are rising fast
enough to make switchovers like this more and more necessary.

--
Bobby G.