Tim wrote: > On Wed, 2008-01-16 at 16:16 -0800, Kam Leo wrote: >> For power efficiency why wouldn't you use a laptop? > > They're generally not designed for being left permanently on. The small > 2.5" hard drives usually aren't. The powersupply/battery chargers often > aren't, particularly if there's a battery attached. They're bigger than > some custom devices can be, and you can end up with plugs coming out all > four sides of a laptop. And there's still the issue of whether the > laptop hardware will be compatible. Those are more or less my thoughts. Several people on different lists suggested using a laptop, eg the Asus Eeepc. I am actually using a laptop - a ThinkPad T23 - for this purpose at the moment, but I have no confidence it will continue to work indefinitely. I find the idea of a little box, with no moving parts, and no screen, rather attractive. As I said before, I'm surprised this is not a more common feeling. The term "server" generally seems to bring up the idea of a huge box with RAID disks serving hundreds of clients. But more and more people must be setting up home systems with just a few laptops served by WiFi, and a minimal server should be adequate for this. -- Timothy Murphy e-mail (<80k only): tim /at/ birdsnest.maths.tcd.ie tel: +353-86-2336090, +353-1-2842366 s-mail: School of Mathematics, Trinity College, Dublin 2, Ireland
