HTPC Blu: Blu-ray Drive, SP/DIF Optical Audio, 4GB RAM, Intel E6300 £399
Our new Home Theatre PC, and smaller than a shoebox. We've combined powerful onboard Nvidia 9300 graphics and a Blu-ray drive with DVI, HDMI, Optical and Coaxial Audio out (as well as a legacy VGA ports.
Every other HTPC out there seems to be Micro ATX isntead of Mini ITX and Blu-ray is always an optional upgrade. What's the point of having a 1080p-capable PC if you have to speed a week on Bittorrent downloading a 20GB Blu-ray rip? Blu-ray optical drives should be standard and it is on ours. Otherwise, just buy a dedicated sub £100 media player (though their interfaces are usually terrible).
The limitation of mini-ITX and small PCs is it can be difficult to sqeeze in an extra graphics card. With that in mind, we've gone with some of the best onboard graphics available, the Nvidia 9300. And instead of using a dual core Atom processor, we're fitting it with a new Pentium Dual Core E6300 Processor, with 2 x 2.8GHz CPUs, FSB of 1066Mhz, and 2MB of L2 Cache. http://processorfinder.intel.com/details.aspx?sSpec=SLGU9
Combined with 4GB of RAM, that makes this a tiny HTPC that you can actually use for gaming and general multi-tasking. All for just £399 ex VAT.
Kingston SSDNow V Series 64GB Review, Bonnie++ Benchmark
We love SSDs, particularly the Intel X25-M 80GB which I've blogged about before. But that's expensive (£134 wholesale) and now Kingston's released the SSDNow with pretty solid write speed of 80 MB/s and a nice 64GB capacity. eBuyer, Overclock.co.uk are selling these for about £92 ex VAT and wholesale is only 12% less.
Boot Time: From Grub to Usable Desktop it boots in 24.0 seconds.
Bonnie++ Benchmarks (all in MB/s):
Sequential Character Output: 11.609
Block Output: 21.171
Rewrite: 10.513
Sequential Character Input: 12.184
Block Input: 130.831
Random Seeks Per Second: 5119
Basically the Samsung F3 hard drive crushes it and offers 8 times the space at one third the price, i.e. the Kingston SSD comes out 24 times more expensive per GB. However, at Random seeks (access time) it's 29.5 times faster which is kind of crazy. The Samsung 3.5" hard drive, by contrast was just 1.3 times faster than the 2.5" Fujitsu Drive.
Samsung SpinPoint F3 HD502HJ 500GB Review, Benchmarking
We really, really prefer SSDs here at Aleutia HQ but occasionally some excitement comes into the "moving parts" end of the storage business.
I was a big fan of Samsung's F2 Eco Drives: silent and just 4.5 Watts. But they were only 5400RPM. The F3 is 7200RPM and offers outstanding performance.
If you want to compare to your own drive, then open a terminal in Ubuntu and type:
sudo apt-get install bonnie++
Then (make sure you are NOT root):
bonnie++
Needs a few gigabytes of free space and takes about 15 minutes. I have a screenshot of the whole process here.
Results (all in MB/sec):
Sequential Character Output: 71.295
Block Output: 137.215
Rewrite: 39.671
Sequential Character Input: 54.493
Block Input: 154.679
Random Seeks Per Second: 173.0
As you can see it's 3-5 times faster than a 7200RPM Laptop drive like the Fujitsu we benchmarked recently.
I knew desktop drives were faster but since the industry only markets spindle speed and cache (and 7200RPM laptop drives have 16MB cache as well) I had no idea how much faster they were!
Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala (AMD64) First Impressions, Boot Time
NB: Hope the cheesy wallpaper doesn't cause anyone to think I'm a Maxim reader: it's a top result on google image search for "Ubuntu wallpaper" and I found it too nerdy to resist!
Now that Beta's been out for 24 hours I downloaded the AMD 64 Bit Edition for my Aleutia office PC. This is (relatively) energy efficient box made from discarded parts we've accumulated during testing: an Asrock A780GM-LE mATX motherboard with an AM3 240 CPU (2 x 2.8GHz, 65W), 4GB of Kingston RAM, SATA DVD-RW drive all in this nice mATX case (lower profile but otherwise similar to the one we use in our U6 Userful PC).
You can upgrade to Karmic from within 9.04 by typing:
Alt + F2
and then:
update-manager -d
Update Manager should open up and tell you: New distribution release '9.10' is available. Click Upgrade and follow the on-screen instructions.
I did this but then it wouldn't boot so I decided to download the Beta version (final version released at end of the month) and install afresh. This is probably best as a major feature of Karmic is the ext4 filesystem and you need a fresh install for this.
These are mere first impressions but the Beta is very polished (think Windows 7 Release Candidate) and makes good on its claims. Immediate benefits:
- Very rapid install time (this is great for system builders like us)
- Boot time is faster.
- Nice colour scheme and very cool bootup screen
- Ubuntu Software Center (in place of Add/Remove software)
- Built-in logic games
- OpenOffice 3.1 (ok not that big a deal)
- New icons (particularly like the swiss army one)
ext4 and other fundamentals aside, it's clearly an evolutionary upgrade. But, like me, you operate in the cloud or have your files backed up, then you might as well though you could wait til RC comes out.
Aleutia E3 Discontinued: eBox-4310, eBox-3310 (eBox-3300) or NorhTec Microclient Jr. DX
To all considering a DMP eBox, I'd strongly recommend the T1 which is fanless and 12V but has a 1.6GHz Intel Atom CPU (N270, same as in Netbooks), up to 2GB RAM, SATA-II SSD, and is still VESA-mountable. All with power consumption of 14W.
http://www.aleutia.com/products/t1
Intel X25-M G2 80GB SSD in MacBook – Boot Time of 10 Seconds, Safari in 1 Second
I have a 3 year old MacBook Core Duo which though lasting three years has been anything but reliable - the fan's failed (a difficult replacement using online guides) and the hard drive failed about 2 weeks after the 1 year warranty ended. But I like the OS and it's an acceptable mothership for my iPhone. I'd upgraded the drive to a 250GB 5400RPM Western Digital model long ago but after we brought in the new Intel X25-M 80GB Generation 2 SSDs I thought I'd install one.
I can't recommend this enough as an upgrade for your laptop. It's a whole new lease on life and far better/cheaper than just buying a new laptop (as I had planned).
- Boot Time: Plunged from 80 Seconds to less than 10 Seconds.
- Shutdown Time: 12 seconds to 2 seconds.
- Safari Opening: 3 seconds to 1 second.
I now don't have to set the computer to sleep since it so quickly shuts down and boots up. Power consumption is 0.15 Watts instead of 2W and since it runs cooler, the fan maxes out (and becomes loud) much less often.
We buy these wholesale and happy to supply for £160 ex VAT on their own via Paypal. About 20% less than anyone else. Or you can buy with one of our PCs such as the T1 or H2.
Installation was easy. I just followed the helpful instructions on iFixit.
Read the full review at Anandtech.
Fujitsu 80GB 2.5″ MHW2080BJ Benchmarked via Bonnie++ (Linux)
The MHW2080BJ became available in the UK about 6 weeks ago and we've sold several since, primarily in our fanless T1 PC. Though we prefer solid state drives, hard drives still hold their own in some areas (moving files across the disc) and of course are much cheaper. This goes for about £21 wholesale, versus £134 for the 80GB Intel X25-M Solid State Drive.
I ran a Bonnie++ test on it. Results are here and are all in MB/sec, except Random Seeks which is just per second.
Sequential Character Output: 8.402
Block Output: 40.053
Rewrite: 18.533
Sequential Character Input: 9.965
Block Input: 45.955
Random Seeks: 132.5
S2 30 Watt Server: 4GB RAM, Dual Core Intel, 1U, SSD or Hotswap Drive
We prepared these recently for a client taking them down to Zamia.
Lenovo L1940P Review – Excellent Build and Just 11 Watts
We recently bought some of these for testing and will shortly be selling them. Build quality is outstanding and wonderful to have a height-adjustable monitor at a low price of £130 (ex VAT) especially for someone like me who's 6 foot 3. Resolution is 1440x900 and it has both a VGA and DVI-D port (both cables included). The Aleutia T1 has a DVI port, as does our H1, H2, and Ion HTPC and these work nicely with it. The VESA mount on the back though is taken up by the height adjustable stand so you can't mount a PC there.
But what's awesome about this is the really, really low power consumption. We tested 16 Watt draw using a Watt Meter, versus about 22 Watts for a normal 17" or 19" TFT.
However the guys over at Silent PC Review have done a much more thorough review and got power consumption down to 11 Watts:
Use the Samsung U70 or Mimo as Your Primary Monitor in Windows 7
We love the Samsung U70 and Nanovision Mimo Monitors. USB powered monitors mean less cabling and are much, much cheaper than 12V DC monitors. The problem is Samsung and Nanovision really think of these as peripheral monitors and it's not obvious how to set it up as your sole and primary monitor.
If you use Windows this is easier and for Windows 7 users there's a beta driver (which was alpha last week). Download it here:
http://www.displaylink.org/forum/showthread.php?p=121#post121
Installing the driver is easy (save to desktop, double-click to open, agree to their terms and conditions, and it wil linstall).
If you have your USB monitor attached and it's on, it will come on as a screen and you can drag and drop to it.
However, to make it your primary monitor, go:
Control Panel > Appearance and Personalization > Display > Adjust Resolution
You'll see both your desktops (in my case an Lenovo L1940p at 1440x900 and a Mimo 740 Touchscreen at 800x480):
Now select your USB monitor (Display 2) with the cursor and change the Multiple Displays option from 'Extend these Displays" to "Show Desktop Only on 2" as I've shown below. Feel free to email me (michael at aleutia dot com) if you have any questions:
Aleutia H2 “Beast” is Just Ridiculously Fast
I'm blogging right now from said bad boy and it's an outstanding experience, if completely underchallenging for the H2. Power consumption is holding steady at 36 Watts and running Windows 7 32-bit even though this only lets me use 3 of my 4GB of RAM.
We've combined an Intel Core 2 Quad Q8200S processor (65W at peak) with a super quiet low profile heatsink and 1200rpm fan and managed to fit it into a case that is just 2.47 liters. Smaller footprint than a piece of A4 paper and just 6.5 mm tall.
Watched Dragon's Den in HD on BBC iPlayer and CPU utilization was around 30%.
Noise level: 33dB though that's measure with a (probably crappy) iPhone app. Soho is pretty noisy so it's effectively silent for us but if you're in a soundproofed study in the Highlands, you're still just going to hear a single, quiet fan.
No case fans needed since the chassis is so ventilated and we've gone with an Intel X25-M 80GB Solid State Drive wth an absurd 230MB/s read speed, 70MB/s write speed.
Industrial PCs for Emerging Economies
We hate moving parts here at Aleutia and we're always working to bring the cost of our rugged PCs. That's because we want to bridge the market gap between overpriced, niche industrial PCs and developing world budgets. That's because both groups value the same things: energy efficiency, no moving parts (less things to go wrong), and the general ability to last for years in the field.
SSDs have traditionally been very expensive and the market has been either overpriced laptops (MacBook Air) or well-off consumers upgrading their overpriced laptops.
We're now partnered with KingSpec, a large SSD manufacturer and will be offering their high speed 32GB and 64GB drives in our best-selling H1, as well our H2, T1, and P1 PCs.
With Read Speed of 175MB/sec and Write Speed of 100MB/sec, these offer far better performance than even desktop hard drives (at 60MB/sec typically) and much quicker access times (no moving platters to start up like in hard drives). And they only use 2W at peak.
Read more at:
http://www.kingspec.com/solid-state-disk-products/ssd-25sata-1032mj.htm
OCZ Vertex SSD Does Not Work with Ubuntu
We were very excited to read reviews of OCZ's recent Vertex solid state drives as well as their brand new Vertex Turbo SSDs.
Tragically, these do not play at all with Linux and specifically Ubuntu, which refuses to format them.
http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=56342
As most of our customers run Linux (and not Windows 7) and value the ability to run XBMC or Boxee on our solid state machines, we've switched to a new drive make, KingSpec.
Linutop 2, Inveneo Computing Station, Koolu Appliance, Viglen MPC-L Reviewed: 1 out of 5 Stars
Two months back Computer Shopper, the leading high street tech magazine here in the UK posted a scathing, and to my mind, completely accurate review of the Linutop 2, giving it 1 out of 5 stars.
The Linutop 2 is actually a rebadged thin client, specifically the First International Computer Mini PC Ion A603. We ourselves looked at selling them but determined the spec was too dated (it was released in early 2007) though several other companies have rebranded it as their own - Viglen sell it as the Viglen MPC-L, Koolu in the States sells it as the Works Everywhere Appliance, and even our friends at Inveneo in San Francisco sell it as the Inveneo Computing Station (though at least they pair it with a 12V DC monitor).
Computer Shopper write:
It uses an AMD Geode LX800 processor, which runs at just 500MHz; the Intel Atom N270 used in other nettops, including Asus's Eee Box B202 (see Labs, Shopper 253), is more than three times as fast, running at 1.6GHz. There's also only 512MB of memory, while most nettops have 1GB. The cut too far, though, is that its solid-state hard disk has only 1GB of storage space.
And conclude:
It's a shame, then, that the slow components drag this computer down. It couldn't even play YouTube video smoothly, as the processor wasn't up to the job. This is even more disappointing considering that Nvidia's nettop ION platform has a graphics card that's capable of playing high-definition video. Using the desktop and OpenOffice felt incredibly sluggish, and there's only 348MB of free disk space for storing your files.
Granted our E2, with a similar processor, doesn't perform much better and struggles with YouTube but at least it has a 1GB of RAM and 8GB of storage (versus 1GB), all for a price of £219, compared to £240. And our shipping costs are far, far less.
But what's really going to shake things up is our new 12V DC Intel Atom-based T1 with 1GB RAM (optional 2GB RAM) and a much faster 1.6GHz CPU for only for £149.
And neither the E2, nor the E3, nor even the kickass T1 require a stupid mounting bracket. VESA-Mounting is built-in.
Antec Mini Skeleton Review
Antec's customer base is extremely different from Aleutia's: individuals building top-end gaming and performance rigs, rather than our bread and butter of schools in Africa running on solar power. However, as Aleutia starts to offer more powerful systems such as our new U6, which connects to 6 x 15" (or greater) VGA monitors and so can be shared by 12 students, I've started to track ATX motherboards, quad core processors, massive heatsinks, silent case fans, terrabyte drives, and even ATX cases. I had come across Antec's somewhat revolutionary open air case and now they have an awesome, though rather expensive, mini-itx version out.
Check out the kickass review above - takes 4 x 2.5" drives as well as offering space for a PCI-E card. Really thinking this could combine well with the Zotac 9300 mini-itx board (Nvidia 9300 with Hybrid SLI) which we use on our B2 and D2. This way you could add a top end graphics card and either a very cheap DVD-RW drive or a BluRay player, perhaps an SSD. Have ordered one in so will let you - my enormous readership 
- know how we get on.
Aleutia D1 with Nvidia Ion Chipset, Optional Blu-ray
The H1 has quickly become our best selling product - offering a reasonable Atom processor and powerful Nvidia Ion chipset (the Nvidia 9400 GPU) in a small, fanless package. The dual core version requires a small though extremly quiet fan and we're going to start offering it in the D1 chassis, which had just shipped with Intel's Dual Core board (D945GCLF2) and a crappy Intel chipset.
This is ideal because the PSU is internal (rather than an external brick on the H1) and it permits the use of a) better performing desktop drives b) an optical drive.
That board upgrade will also permit a possible 4GB of RAM (great for users who care more about RAM than CPU power) and (best of all) an optional slimline Blu-ray recorder.
Goes on sale tomorrow (July 23rd).
LG BD370 BluRay Player Review (a £130 fanless PC with BluRay)
I've already blogged about how much I like the LG M227WD TV and though I use an Aleutia H1 for my HTPC setup, I wanted to compare it to the set-top experience. After all, a lot more people are going to buy cheap, standalone devices for BluRay, rather than home theatre PCs or Sony PS3s, just as hundreds of millions of more DVD players were sold than PCs with DVDs or Sony PS2s.
I bought the second cheapest I could fine (like choosing wine at a restaurant!), the BD370 on eBuyer (£130 ex VAT with shipping).
It's got a wondeful finish, HDMI output (along with component), very quick boottime and it plays BluRay flawlessly. If it was a PC, I'd stand in awe of its low cost perfection. It even has a 10/100 network port as well as USB 2.0 (to let you play DivX movies)
But actually, if you had a narrow, though reasonable, definition of a PC as "something that can get you on YouTube and let you play downloaded films", then you'd only need this.
There's built-in software that connects you to YouTube (navigated by an onscreen keyboard controlled by the remote). Of course you can't participate but it's a great add-on, directly at the expense of the HTPC market.
This is a major trend - electronics are becoming intelligent. If a Linksys router can run Linux (OpenWRT) and serve as a 5W fanless PC, then what's to stop a very tiny (and distorted) distribution offering a terminal, an office suite, and a web browser? Plug in a USB keyboard and you would have a fanless, smart looking PC with integrated BluRay for just £130.
LG has economies of scale that even Dell would struggle to match, let alone Aleutia.
eBay already sells LCD TVs with built-in DVD players, and a USB key for playing Divx files. And some of these even let you play NES games off your pen drive, since the TV has a built-in emulator.
If you can emulate Nintendo games or build in YouTube, why not a whole range of apps that collectively offer a PC experience?
12V LED Display – LG W2286L HDMI Display – Possibly Perfect for Africa
Aside from overpriced (£220), touchscreen monitors for cars, 12V Monitors are extremely difficult to obtain. In the good old days of 2006, Newegg and other retailers had 2 or 3 15" XGA monitors with an external PSU but this side of the pond it was limited to a single Acer model and that was soon abandoned.
Now everything has a brick PSU (AC to DC) built in. You convert AC from the mains to 5V DC (sometimes 12V DC) to run the display. Great for reducing cable clutter but awful if you are off grid because then you are taking 12V Solar Power, converting it to AC in an inverter (10-15% loss), then converting back from AC to DC inside the monitor (probably a similar loss).
Our motto aspires to be Direct Current Computing and we want things to be as optimized for solar as possible. This means DC computers (all but the D1 and D2 have DC inputs), DC servers (the new B2 is 12V DC input), and DC Monitors. Nothing wasted on inverters. Everything kept simple.
I'm worried my blog has become a bit of a LG fanboy site (perhaps the only LG fansite?), but a new monitor due out imminently has a lot of potential for us. 2 x HDMI and 1 x DVI ports hardly matters but it does have a VGA port, and apparenly achieves its slim design by having the brick external.
PC Pro gives it poor marks for this clumsiness but for Africa it could be great - a high quality, low power display that two students can share (a 1920x1200 model is also coming out) for about £200, or what a 10.4" 800x600 display typically goes for.
Samsung U70 USB Monitor with Ubuntu Support. Uses Just 4.5 Watts
I am extremely excited about this even though my sample doesn't arrive for another two weeks (full review and action shots to follow). As I've mentioned before, 12V monitors are a real thorn for us. We usually end up shipping dozens of inexpensive Hannspree 17" (1440x900) AC monitors and packaging them up with inverters, which though inexpensive are rather wasteful of the (very expensive) solar power.
Samsung has released what's basically a USB-powered photo frame (with marketing focused on this being a peripheral display), but it's perfect for us because it
a) uses just 4.5 Watts
b) reduces the need for another plug (DC or otherwise)
c) is an acceptable 800x480 resolution (the same as the Nokia N810). Not great for two students sharing a screen but fine for single use.
Thus any of our 12V PCs (the F5, P1, B2, and U5) could power this monitor and so you'd need just one solar panel, one battery, and one (or a few) 12V PCs. Nice and simple.
And though Samsung only offers Windows drivers, it's already been used with Linux in this fantastic example: an Asus WLAN router running OpenWRT and using a U70 since there's obviously no VGA port.
Fanless MacBook (or Why Fanless Rules)
Like many entrepreneurs, I began my startup (in October, 06) with a MacBook. I had rejected the shackles of Windows, with its endless patches, wizards, and flakiness, for a personal computer that "just worked". Icons that bounced up and down, a better aesthetic, solid battery life, and a beautiful chassis made better by a Hokusai print from Gelaskins.
But Apple suffers from infant mortality. 1 week after my 12 month warranty expired, the hdd failed. This was before Time Machine and I lost everything, except that I didn't because what mattered was in the cloud. Corporate email hosted by Google, photos on Flickr, spreadsheets on Google Docs, memos on BaseCamp, and even a handful of important presentations on Slideshare.
Now I build myself a new PC nearly every week and everything is in the cloud. I've learned that all hard drives fail. I'm lucky though - I have a 20Mb connection that costs me £18. Our partners in West Africa pay 100 times that for a VSAT that's a 40th as fast. When you can't back up to the cloud, you can't trust a component that's spinning around 7200 times per second. It will fail and everything is lost. Go Solid State or RAID it.
And now two years in, my MacBook's fan has died. It was a sudden death - for months it has been so clogged with dust that it was slower and noisier and so when the processor started heating up, it would kick into 6000 RPM and you could hear it in the bedroom or throughout a starbucks. Absurd.
But then it failed. I would open smcFanControl (a popular OS X app), and watch the temperature rise from 35 C to 90 or even 92 C (practically boiling!) before it would shut off, an increase that took about 40 minutes if you were using Firefox or 5 minutes if I was having iPhoto resize photos for an iPod. And then you'd have to wait 3 hours for it cool down (I actually considering putting it in the fridge.)
Luckily I could buy a spare on eBay (£23) and install it using a tutorial on iFixit. It's now load at 6000 RPM but not nearly as loud.
But what if I live in Yola, Nigeria (where 30 Aleutia E2s are installed)? No Apple store, no eBay seller with free Naija shipping...
Our B2 features a ridiculous Quad Core CPU and it has a massive 50mm heatsink on top but it still needs a short (though very wide) 1000 RPM fan on top. Silent but not fanless.
I'd love to offer serious performance but without the need for fans, whether water-cooled, or by using humongous (like more than a foot tall) heatsinks and custom cases. Or both perhaps.
Megapixel Is the Common Denominator (Like Buying Food by Weight), 720p Sucks
You go to a supermarket and the only way to sift through the prices is to look at the cost per pound/kilogram (or for paper towels, the cost per 100 sheets).
I've started to view everything in megapixels. An iPhone displays is 480 x 320 or .153. Standard Definition is 640x480 or about 0.3 megapixels. That's assuming a 1:5 ratio (i.e. you are recording a video on a phone/camera/camcorder). Movies like Lord of the Rings are shot at 1:2.35 ratio, but then have less pixels vertically bceause it couldn't fit on a TV otherwise. Not sure how this works.
720p is actually 1280x720 or .91 MP. We use a Nikon D90 which has a 900,000 pixel 3" display or 1280x720 which is 3 times sharper per cm (or inch, as in pixels per inch, or ppi) than an iPhone. Pretty insane.
Obviously, I'm delighted that YouTube and Vimeo have so much HD content, which is actually 3 times the resolution of SD content.
But so few people dileneate between 720p (.91 MegaPixels) and 1080p, which is 1920 x 1080 or a whopping 2.07 Megapixels. Even I used to look at 720 versus 1080 and think it was just 50% more resolution - I was thinking lines not pixels. But it's actually 2.2 times as sharp (2.07/.91).
Of course, this is all going to look like silly differences when Ultra HD (2000x4000 or 8 Megapixels) comes out.
It's already out in some circles, thanks to the Red Ray player.
LG M227WD 22″ LCD TV Review (1920×1080) and my own HTPC setup
Back when we were testing the Ion HTPC I bought a 1920x1080 LG 22" HDTV. Loaded with inputs (VGA, DVI, HDMI, etc.) and ideal for low power (50W) HDCP testing.
We eat our own dogfood here at Aleutia and I run a Dual Core H1 with a 320GB drive partitioned between Ubuntu 9.04 and Windows 7 RC, along with a Lite-On Dual Layer BluRay drive.
Not even going to get into the all the advantages of stability and included software, but the default windows manager on Ubuntu (Gnome) offers a wonderful, clean interface perfectly suited to computing on a television.
Meanwhile Windows 7 RC (free unti middle of 2010 when it will start to restart my system every hour) runs PowerDVD and plays BluRay movies (CPU utilization according to the task manager is just 23%).
Chicken Factories and Server Farms
5 years back the Wall Street Journal ran a human interest feature on the Hmong community in Oklahoma, immigrants who'd moved to the rural South as contractors for Tyson (which drops off day old chicks and feed, and then collects them a few months later). Mr Lee barely gets by managing 223,000 chickens and each morning starts by cleaning out the casualties: "Trudging up and down the building -- 40 feet longer than a football field --he scanned for dead and diseased birds, snatching them from the floor and piling them into a plastic pail."
I eat free range, but I'd argue that data centres are heading this way, and should. Google owns well north of a million servers. For anyone with 1000 servers it makes no sense to buy expensive enterprise blades from HP and IBM. Instead you stack 'em high and cheap and you start mapping your power costs and TCO (or in Google's case, install them next to cheap power plants).
It doesn't matter if the servers die, since you'll just distribute your computing power elsewhere, something Cal Henderson of Flickr pioneered. And they don't have to be built to enterprise spec because they are never going to be moved - they'll sit in the same rack until they die.
I'd argue that cold-swap is fine. All hard drives fail but if you have a distributed architecture it doesn't matter if server E7891 dies - you can just clean it out the next morning when you do your rounds.
Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo aren't the only ones with a million servers - big web hosting companies are getting up there too and that's where we hope to come in.
You can charge more for dedicated servers but most people who need a web server would be overserved by a power-hungry, expensive, 2U server from HP. Much better to have something that's "good enough", cheap, and doesn't use much power (cheap TCO).
Dell is making a stab at this with a cheap ($600) blade called the XS11-VX8 that uses a 64 bit Via processor (supports virtualization), and has a 3.5" drive. The problem is that if you're carving up a server with 10 users and your drive fails, you're going to have 10 angry customers and the clock is ticking.
Our Virtual Private Server will be cheaper, and have a hot swap chassis (1/2 U) for RAID 1. Drive dies and the clock isn't ticking except for you to replace the drive. Which you do, because otherwise you'll have ten angry customers.
S2 will be single core, 2GB RAM, dual disk and Gb lan.
S8 will be dual core, 8GB RAM, dual disk, and 3Gb Lan.
Aleutia Ion HTPC: Dual Core Atom CPU, Nvidia Ion GPU, 4GB RAM, Blu Ray Drive, 1TB Storage and Low Power!
Given our dual focus on Sub Saharan Africa and low power computing, Blu Ray (and the onboard graphics and HDCP support required) hasn't really been a focus for us. But the new Nvidia Ion platform enables us to add to our existing Intel Atom systems and offer a small, low power, and silent (very small, low speed fan) Home Theatre PC, complete with Sony Blu Ray drive as standard and 4GB of RAM. It plays 1080p content smoothly whether from the ultra-fast desktop hard drive or off the Blu Ray drive, and it boasts a DVI, HDMI, and VGA port and Optical SP/DIF Audio Output. Runs Ubuntu 9.04 as standard though it's been tested with Windows 7, Vista, and XP.
For £399 (ex VAT), you get a standard configuration of 2GB and 500GB Drive (16MB Cache, ultra quiet). For an additional £50, you get it loaded with a 1TB Drive and 4GB RAM.
Aleutia D2 Launch: Ultra Small Low Power Intel Core 2 Quad Core Q8200S PC with Nvidia 9300 Graphics, 4GB RAM, Wi-Fi, and Optional Blu Ray
Yes, Intel enjoys far too much sway in the PC industry and we want to avoid being another Intel-inside box shifter but when it comes to running multiple applications, CPU matters. As Tom's Hardware writes, "When it comes to running multiple apps at the same time, compressing/decompressing large archives, and yes, even transcoding, CPUs are still very much deciding factors in resulting performance."
And Intel's new energy efficient (65W) Quad Cores offer a subtstanial boost over the 65W AMD Phenom we offer in the B1. The Intel Core 2 Quad Core Q8200S boasts 4 cores at 2.33GHz with FSB of 1333MHz and 4MB of L2 Cache. (The Q8200 is a 95W processor, whilst we use the more energy efficient Q8200s - performance is identical.)
We've paired this with a powerful onboard Nvidia 9300 GPU that enables 1080p playback, supports Direct X 10.0 for gaming, and dual monitor setups, thanks to the Nvidia nView controller (the D2 has VGA, DVI, and HDMI ports).
We've even squeezed in 4GB of DDR2 800MHz RAM, a DVD-RW drive (optional slimline Blu Ray drive), and Integrated 802.11 a/b/g as well as optical audio out. 500GB Drive with 16MB Cache, Optional 1TB Drive with 32MB Cache.
All of it fitting into the same sleek case as the D1, with total power consumption of just 80W.
Aleutia H1: A Tiny, Fanless, VESA-Mount HTPC with Nvidia Ion and 1080p Playback
I'm fascinated by the hotel industry and the Aleutia Labs have long focussed on designing a PC able to stream HD content (720p) into the rooms of the world's luxury hotels. The challenge is that no one paying $600/night wants to be kept awake by the drone of a PC humming along and so any HTPC must be completely silent. It also has to have either an HDMI or a DVI port and ideally SP/DIF optical audio support. It has to be small (ideally VESA-mountable), low power (since it will be on all the time), and it must be competively priced. The silent B1 was initially designed for this purpose and its dual core CPU and onboard ATi 3200 ensured that it could play 1080p with ease (less than 50% CPU utilization). But it overshot the needs and was just a little too big.
The Fanless H1 (H for Hotel) is our next revision and is purpose-built for the in-room entertainment industry. It fits in the hands, has no moving parts, and thanks to the onboard Nvidia GPU (and 1.6GHz Atom 230 CPU) it can smoothly play 720p and 1080p content. 2GB of 667MHz RAM (the FSB is 533MHz), Gigabit Lan, HDMI and DVI port, as well as Optical Audio Out.
Power is supplied via an external brick with power consumption of just 30W.
Runs Ubuntu Linux, Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows XP, and Windows Embedded Standard 2009 (formerly XPe). For Linux and WES users, we're offering it with 8GB of flash storage, ideal for media streaming.
HTPC (whether Windows or Myth TV or Boxee) users have the option of a 2.5" Drive up to 500GB. Priced from £199/$300.
Aleutia Nvidia Alliance: The GPU is the New CPU
I'm excited to finally announce that Aleutia has been selected along with Acer as an Nvidia Ion release partner. As Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huan said on May 8th, "Ion has forever changed what consumers can expect from the mainstream PC. Even affordable and small PCs can be wonderful and deliver the full PC experience." Aleutia couldn't agree more. The PC industry is so modular that most hardware makers live a miserable, profit-free existence, whilst Intel (and to a lesser extent Microsoft) capture the vast majority of profits (and enjoy far more powerful brand value than the expendable builders who use them). Only Apple, with its integrated OS, manages to avoid modularity and achieve acceptable profits.
I've always argued that Intel (and thus the PC industry) overshoots most customer needs and I presented this at the O'Reilly Web 2.0 Conference in '08 (slides here). Many people just wanted to word process and browse the web and so we produced the E2 which offered the performance of a 4 year old computer but in a much smaller case and with much lower power consumption, which meant it could be used in rural Africa and so open up new markets.
However, the web itself has changed and flash-heavy services like YouTube and BBC iPlayer demand more processing power. So we released systems based on the Intel Atom, itself a rebranded Centrino processor from a few years ago. Good for web browsing but unable to play the media that increasingly faster broadband speeds deliver, such as YouTube HD and Vimeo.
Graphics cards have been doing a lot of the heavy lifting for the last few years and their consumer focus has driven costs down massively. The premise of the Ion is to marry an entry level low power CPU (the Atom) with a really decent GPU. These always use less power and are frequently passively cooled. And so you get something that offers "good enough" general computing for the masses with outstanding media playback, which is more and more what users demand.
Aleutia's focus on fanless, low power computers has made us a natural candidate to be an Nvidia Ion launch partner and we're proud to announce the release of 3 new Ion-based PCs which will be released on the 18th, the same day that Acer releases its single core Revo. Exciting times for everyone at Aleutia!
Fanless Intel Atom Board (D945GSEJT) to Arrive in Low Profile Aleutia PCs Soon
A new Intel motherboard has snuck its way onto their site, with a release expected by the end of June. It's much lower profile than the D945GCLF2 that we use in most of our PCs and it's got a handy DVI port. Most impressive is that the 945GC Express Chipset has been swapped for the less power hungry 945GSE which will be passively cooled.
What boggles my mind is that they've equipped this with the crummy N270 single core Atom processor found in about 100 different netbooks and not the dual core 330 Atom that we use (and which is also passively cooled.
Incidentally, Jetway released a reference design board of this same spec (fanless, with DVI, N270, and 945GSE) back in January as the NF94-270-LF but that cost a fortune (£117 wholesale) and I'd expect this to be much cheaper.
Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty Jackalope Boot Time of 19 Seconds on New Aleutia D1
The latest release is only a few days old but already are all our products are running it. One major change has been to cut down the boot time, though of course the faster the drive, the faster the boot time. After talking with some of the Canonical guys at the Jaunty launch party, it seems boot time is measured from just after grub boot loader until the login screen.
The new Aleutia D1 comes with a dual core Intel Atom CPU, 2GB of RAM, and integrated dvd burner. With a 30GB OCZ solid stated drive we've installed for a customer in the Gambia, it boots up in just 19 seconds.
Launch: The Aleutia U5. Userful Software + 5VGA Ports = 5 Desktops at $98 and 8 Watts each.
Though many customers use our PCs as thin clients, I've always been a fan of stand alone desktops, and preferred to think of our E2 as a "medium client", able to function as an adequate PC for individual users or for customers who weren't familiar with configuring and managing a server. But the definition of adequate has changed since then, and with YouTube now a killer app we wanted to look at alternatives that could match its power consumption.
The U5 is is powered by a 2 x 1.6GHz Intel Atom processors, has 2GB of high speed RAM, and is equipped with 5 VGA ports thanks to the PCI graphics cards we've added. It's still small and good looking, and practically silent. Most importantly, it's designed to run our partner Userful's Desktop Multiplier software (on top of the Ubuntu 8.10 OS).
Virtualization has conquered the server room, where expensive hardware no longer sits idle at 10% CPU utilization running one application but instead is maxed out to save both upfront hardware and ongoing electricity costs.
Userful's software offers a smarter solution to classroom computing: instead of taking low-end spec PCs that use 8 Watts, you have one high-spec system cleverly shared over 5 monitors. Same power consumption per seat but disproportionately better value.
Either go for value with popular TFTs that have been massively price reduced by consumer demand in the West - such as the Hannspree HW173AB (1440x900 res).
Or, since the U5 has a 12V DC Input, keep the entire classroom on DC power by using 10.4" touchscreen TFTs that use just 10W. The latter means we can offer the U5 with 5 monitors, an 80 Watt Folding Solar Panel, and a 100Ah carbon fiber leisure battery as a "Solar School Lab in a Crate".
The U5 will cost $490 to government or education customers, and $550 to businesses. You'll need Userful licenses ($69 for education, $99 for business) which we can supply.
For an extra $15 each, you get a USB and audio hub that sits beneath each monitor (with USB A extension cable plugging into the U5).