Tiny server?

[Timothy Murphy]

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