Tiny computing

[latinstorm]

I'm thinking about buying a tiny computer. I'm already running a fanless tiny computer as a server and it's great, but I kind of want a case. Also the switch to a laptop hard drive would cut down on the sound and power. Does the lazyweb have any comments or suggestions?

Comments

[lantius]

are you planning on having it actually be a fileserver, or just a box for applications? if so, skip the laptop drive and go straight to a cf/sd card. no moving parts! 16gb is like $60.

i went for a dedicated nas to handle my fileserving needs, the d-link dns-323. i use it for smb and daap.

[latinstorm]

It might be file server too. The lure of Enhanced CTorrent is great. Also add a splash of development in there too.

[evan]

Another good option for keeping heat/space/sound down is to netboot it. That requires you have another machine elsewhere that's always up, though...

[latinstorm]

I was thinking about that too. I think if I ended up with more than one (and I don't know why I would) I would definitely netboot any extras.

[evan]

If you have any other file server then that'll do. If you don't have a file server, then making this thing into a file server will add a bunch of noise... hard drive noise in my "silent" PC is why I gave up leaving it on in my room. Disks are quiet initially but they get whinier and whinier slowly.

[latinstorm]

Hrm. Solid State? I wonder if you can netBoot off a NAS?

And it doesn't need to be silent. It's going to live in the living room, and any noise will be masked by beast of a shuttle fan. I just like the idea of the low power, low noise server that is always available. I thought about just getting a dreamhost account, but I want my data on my own disk.