Shoot Out: Intel X25-V 40GB SSD vs. WD3200BEVT HDD vs. Pretec 8GB SSD , Bonnie++ Benchmarks
We've already sold a handful of these Intel X25-V SSDs to customers and listed them on the website. V is for value and it is slower than the X25-M but still boasts a decent theoretical read speed (175MB/s), compared to the Kingston SSDNow value line that is 100MB/s. Albeit, this is alongside a very low write speed (40MB/s). The write speed would seem to be comparable to a 5400RPM hard drive and we're pitting against one our favourites the Western Digital Scorpio Blue 3200BEVT, a very quiet 320GB 2.5" drive that doesn't have the whine that Seagate laptop drives do. But its' about 20% less expensive than faster SSDs (like the ATP reviewed below) and offers 40GB of space instead of 32GB.
Update: added the 8GB Pretec SSD (actually a CF card inside a SATA enclosure) that we sell with the T1.
I installed Lucid Lynx (Ubuntu 10.04 Alpha 2) and bonnie++. Results are below (all in MB/s)
- Block Output on SSD: 43.735 MB/s
- Block Output on HDD: 82.322 MB/s
- Block Output on CF: 8.160 MB/s
- Rewrite on SSD: 31.022 MB/s
- Rewrite on HDD: 34.232 MB/s
- Rewrite on CF: 10.793 MB/s
- Block Input on SSD: 211.938 MB/s
- Block Input on HDD: 84.112 MB/s
- Block Input on CF: 53.330 MB/s
- Random Seeks Per Second on SSD: 3674
- Random Seeks Per Second on HDD: 162.7
- Random Seeks Per Second on CF: 2167
No surprise but Random Seeks is where SSDs just kill it - no stupid moving platters to spin up. On the other hand they are reasonably matched elsewhere and the hdd is a little more than a third of the cost. Will update shortly with our Fujitsu 40GB drive since these are the 3 we use across our product range.
ATP Solid State Drive SSD Review
We've been given two of these by our distributor (Jactron) to test out.
I've installed Ubuntu on one and just run a Bonnie++ test with the following results:
Sequential Character Output: 10.847
Block Output: 54.399
Rewrite: 33.776
Sequential Character Input: 12.489
Block Input: 167.83
Random Seeks Per Second: 3677
Fanless Atom D510 Processor in Aleutia D1 and P1 Tomorrow
We've already blogged about the D510MO Pine Trail motherboard with lower power consumption and a well thought out heatsink to keep the processor passively cooled. Unfortunately it does not work with Ubuntu out of the box - you have to flash the BIOS at least for 9.10 - but of course Aleutia does that for you before shipping it as part of our free OEM install of 9.10.
We've finished the stress testing of the board and will be offering it in our D1 and P1 starting tomorrow (soft launch tonight). Both feature much lower power consumption. With the D1 we're switching from the Compucase 8K01 case we (and lots of other UK system builders) relied on before to a new, fanless model from Taiwan that is is 2/3 the size. The 8K01 has an internal brick adapter but relies on a cheap 5cm fan to keep it cool, resulting in noise, and meaning there's just an IEC input not a DC input. Moreover, with two of the units, that noise increased over time which just isn't acceptable. Now it will be fanless and have a 19V DC input.
The P1 is still aimed at sailboats and marine customers and so has a 6-26V DC Input with a 40GB hdd or 40GB Intel X25-V SSD (nothing larger is needed for sea navigation). It will be in a wall mount case with the option of a extra Gb lan port, making it ideal as a server. We've also dropped the price £80 and will now offer Win7 with it as well.
Lenovo X100e Power Consumption, X100e UK Review
Over the years I've had both an IBM X30 and X40 Thinkpad, justly famed for their build quality and usability but small and light size. Before netbooks, the X-Series was the only 12" notebook around but that portability (and the enteprise spec within) came at a high price. The X301 (Macbook Air slimness but with an optical drive - watch their cheeky ad here) retails at £1847.
The X100e instead features a similar chassis and display, with an excellent keyboard and pointing stick, but with "netbook" internals. So instead of a Core 2 Duo there's AMD's Neo MV-40 (inexpensive like the Intel Atom but a bit better performing) and the Ati 3200 onboard graphics we have come across and used in Jetway mini-itx motherboards. Supposedly it will drive older games like Half Life 2 at a playable frame-rate but I've been unable to get Big Buck Bunny running at 1080p at least as an h.264 nor will YouTube play at 720p (even with Adobe Flash 10.1 installed for both IE and Chrome). For now I will chalk this up to user error, at least until I install Ubuntu on it using these steps, an OS I am more comfortable with.
Most netbooks have a glossy finish (fingerprint magnet) and glossy display (useless except for seeing your reflection). The X100e has a glorious matte finish throughout and a bright 1366 x 768 11.6" display, it's best feature.
There are better and more thorough reviews online, specifically this one:
http://netbooked.net/netbook-reviews/review/lenovo-thinkpad-x100e-review/
So I'm going to stop giving a general review and focus on power consumption as no one else has and it's important to really establish how netbooks stack up with nettops like Aleutia T1s.
Running off the battery, without cranking down processor and with screen at full brightness (15 on scale of 1-15) it uses 25W. But that's not with the CPU maxed out encoding a movie, but just with Chrome in background and using the Snipping tool:
Keep the brightness high but max out all the power-saving features (i.e. crank CPU down) and you're at 20W.
Aleutia H4: Fanless HTPC in Lian Li PC-Q07 Case
I'll post a review separately but of the 30 or so mini-itx cases we've worked with, the Lian Li PC-Q07 is the best. And because the board is vertically mounted it can fit a massive heatsink, allowing us to passively cool a 45W CPU (Quad Core AMD 600e or Dual Core 240e), or even a 65W (hell's bells, we could go with Core i5 even at 73W). There's also a 2.5" SATA drive slot (for SSDs), a 3.5" drive slot with anti-vibration rubber mountings, and either a 5.25" optical drive (for Blu-ray Writer) or an extra 3.5" drive (ideal as a cold swap, fanless, quad core server).
Dimensions, 193mm x 280mm x 208mm (W,H,D).
More pics, videos, and pricing details shortly.
Silent Quad Core AMD Fanless PC: the Continuing Journey of the Aleutia H4
Aleutia is in the process of carving out a real niche as a Fanless PC company, with a range of silent PCs that are not only passively cooled but do not suffer from noisy case fans or unreliable Power Supply fans. This is feasible with low voltage processors like the Intel Atom but we'd really like to offer a serious Dual Core and Quad Core PC for our customers who need that extra horsepower.
AMD have helped by at last releasing a line of updated CPUs with a TDP of just 45W. By comparison, Intel desktop CPUs are 65W and more and both AMD and Intel Quad Cores typically give off 95W of heat. Our H2 features the Intel Core 2 Quad Q8200S (65W) rather than the Q8200 (95W) but it's expensive and 65W is just to much heat to passively cool in a small case (and pretty tough even in a large tower).
The AMD 600e has 4 cores at 2.2GHz and we've found a specialized heatsink that can passively cool it.
We've also found the world's smallest Micro ATX case and we'd love to offer it in this case (as mATX boards are much cheaper and allow for 8GB of RAM and more) but then we have the challenge of finding an mATX PSU without a fan or using a PicoPSU and connecting a 12V 9 Amp brick AC adapter which usually has a fan (and fanless versions are very expensive).
The solution is to mount the 600e and heatsink on a mini-itx board (in this case the Zotac 8200 with Nvidia 8200 IGP) but we need a case with a small footprint and a lot of height. I have looked at about 100 mini-itx cases but so far none fit the bill so we may have to custom make one. Need about 11 cm clearance.
Do any of our readers have a suggestion?
Intel Pine Trail: New Energy Efficient D1 PC with D510MO Now Available
We've already blogged about how great this board is and how much lower the power consumption is but now that we've had a chance to test it. we can confirm that power consumption averages 10 Watts less despite the slightly faster clock speed of the CPU (2 x 1.66GHz versus 2 x 1.6GHz). Best of all it's passively cooled. There's still a fan in the D1 case though we are working on making it completely fanless. Still comes with 4GB of RAM, a DVD-RW drive, and a Samsung F3 hard drive for £299 ex VAT.
Broadcom BCM70012 Crystal HD 1080p Decoder in Aleutia PC
We live in exciting times. Broadcom has released the Crystal HD BCM70012 (official link), a Mini PCIe 1080p decoder. Since the Aleutia Fanless T1 PC has a mini PCI express card slot (which we often use for an 802.11n Intel adapter) you can upgrade that low power PC so that it can play back 1080p content without having to resort to the more expensive Nvidia Ion boards we use in the Aleutia H1 Fanless HTPC.
Even better, the BCM70012 is supported by Adobe Flash 10.1 (still in beta), just like the Ion chipset. Flash 10.1 is less processor intensive than 10.0 because it uses the GPU as well. That means that for £25 extra, an Aleutia Fanless T1 can play back YouTube in HD (now 1080p) something that my MacBook cannot do, as well as BBC's iPlayer (720p).
Anandtech has a great article, highlighting the full linux support enjoyed by the Broadcom BCM70012 and XBMC's (Xbox Media Centre) ability to utilize it, as well as Boxee.
Fanless Small Network Server with Dual NIC and Low Power Intel Atom Processor
CD and hand shown for scale
Many customers buy the Aleutia T1 to use an always-on server. It supports PXE Network boot and can be configured to automatically Power On after Power Loss. It is also very low power, using only 17 Watts under load. With 500GB and 750GB 2.5" laptop drives now affordable, this makes it ideal as a small, low power network server.
However, the T1 has only 1 network port (10/100/1000) and naturally a lot of projects require two network ports.
We recently solved this for one of our customers by using a PCI Gigabit Network card with full Linux support and mounting it with a riser card in a larger, ventilated case. This has the advantage of offering more air flow. It's not VESA-mountable like the T1 but it can be wall mounted.
Unlike many fanless network servers, the T1 Dual NIC comes with 2GB RAM (OEM customers can have 512MB or 1GB for less) and a decent x86 processor in the Intel Atom N270 at 1.6GHz.
Fanless Intel Pine Trail PC Coming This Week
Just before CES kicked off, Intel announced a new Atom mini-itx motherboard, the D510MO. This uses the new Pine Trail platform which combines the memory controller into the DX9 graphics controller, reducing power consumption. Intel has also finally ditched the cheapo fan it used to put over the graphics controller in favour of a large heatsink, allowing the board to be passively cooled. There are also 2 x DIMM slots (like the Asrock 330 Atom board) allowing for 4GB of RAM. The D510 CPU is also a bit faster (2 x 1.66GHz) than the 330 (2 x 1.66GHz).
The power savings are substantial. Anandtech has a great write up with load power consumption on a test system dropping from 44.2 Watts to 25.8 Watts. Idle power consumption also plummets, from 41 to 21.2 Watts.
All this is great news for Aleutia customers as we'll be using it for our D1 starting this week helping us create a PC that is:
- Fanless
- Dual Core
- 4GB of RAM
- Affordable
- Optional SSD
Currently the internal PSU on the D1 uses a fan but we are looking at passively cooled PSUs.
This morning we've just received our first batch of the boards from Intel's biggest UK distributor. To ensure quality (and avoid any grey market issues) we only source components from Tier 1 distributors. This translates to better support for end-users as it is simple (and quick) for us to replace any failed parts.
Will have internal pictures of D1 up soon.
Blue and White Porcelain PC – As Extreme as Everest
Been researching PC case manufacturers. This website is so far the nuttiest (though I am only on letter G in my list), with power supplies pictured on top of a mountain and proclaimed, "As Extreme as Everest".
Apple Now Bigger than IBM, Feels Like 1983
IBM's market capitalization today is $166b and AAPL's worth $170b. The order of the day is proprietary and with iPhone supremacy (100,000 apps!) it looks to become Microsoft. Here's a clip from 26 years ago with Steve Jobs as David and Big Blue as IBM. (Smaller res because image quality sucks.)
Meanwhile Aleutia produces PCs with no moving parts that run on solar and can last 5 years in rural Africa.
RAMbo Server: AMD 240e-based Low Power Server with 8-16GB DDR3 RAM
Unlike Intel, AMD still produces 45W Processors. These are much easier to cool (with a huge heatsink you can go passive) and of course use less power than a 65W, 95W, or 125W processor. We've taken their newest Athlon II X2 240e which is 2 x 2.8GHz (2MB L2 cache) and put in a really small mATX case with an energy efficient Gigabyte motherboard and a whopping 8 (or 16 or 4) Gigabytes of super high-speed DDR3 RAM. This memory is clocked at 1300MHz!
Whole idea is a lot of server applications just need a basic processor (ideally dual core) but need lots and lots for RAM. This way we keep the power footprint down (about 50W) and the price is low: £499 ex VAT for the 8GB version.
As it is a server, we've added an extra Gb lan port via a PCI card slot and there's an optional DVD-RW drive (though this adds to the power consumption). Only 3.7" tall so practically fits in a 2U space.
Aleutia H3: a Real Dual Core CPU, 4GB RAM, and One Fan…possibly passive.
A lot of applications can only use two cores and so it's better to have 2 fast cores (2 x 3.0GHz) than the four slower cores of our energy efficient H2 (4 x 2.33GHz). For the H3, we're using a new AMD processor (AM3 socket) as it offers better performance than the Pentium and Core 2 Duo processors. AMD is like Avis - they're number two, so they try harder.
Specifically, it's a Athlon II X2 250 (2 x 3.0GHz CPU). Unlike an Intel Atom 330 this is a real processor and more than capable for gaming or HD Flash playback.
We'd love to passively cool this but it's not possible in such a small case so we are shipping it with a large heatsink and single, slow fan (speed can be set in BIOS) that will be extra quiet. Drive options will be 40GB hard drive (7200RPM, quiet, and cheap) or 32GB SSD. 4GB of 1066MHz RAM (our fastest yet!) as standard.
We have been working on a Single Core AMD Sempron 140 solution as this is a 45W CPU and not a 65W CPU. And it's a beast (not your mother's Sempron!) but again it's too hard too passively cool as the video above shows. As soon as you remove the fan, temp jumps to 70 and then 80 C.
Our only hope is to use something like the Scythe Ninja, which is huge: 5 inches (or 120mm) cubed. So for now the spec is:
- Onboard Nvidia Geforce 8200 (1080p is no problem)
- H1/H2 Case
- AMD Athlon II X2 250 CPU
- 2 x 2GB 1066 MHz Kingston RAM
- 12V DC Input (PicoPSU)
- 102W External AC Adapter
- 40GB or 250GB 7200RPM SATA-II Drive or 32GB KingSpec or 64GB Kingston SSD
Amazon UK will be listing the 64GB Kingston Spec which will retail for £449 ex VAT or £516.35 with VAT and shipping in the UK.
World’s Lowest Power Windows Home Server: Fanless, Atom CPU, 2GB RAM, 750GB Hard Drive, and Gb Lan for £279
The Aleutia T1 has quickly become our top-selling PC since its general release in August. We sold nearly 100 in September and as it shares the exact same chipset as our F5 we have decided to phase out the F5 and offer the T1 with a new 750GB Drive laptop drive that uses only 2W, for total power consumption of just 18 Watts.
That means you get a fanless server with only one moving part (the hard drive), practically silent, and with 2GB of RAM and a Gigabit network port for a mere £279 ex VAT (£320.85 including VAT). Designed to be a perfect file or print server or host some light web traffic. Fully compatible with Windows Home Server as well - though it only has one drive and so isn't an ideal WHS box. We're releasing a new 4-bay Hotswap NAS for that purpose soon, the N1.
Samsung P2070 EcoFit 20″ 12V LCD – Slim, sleek, and Perfect for Rural Africa?
When you produce solar power, it's DC (Direct Current). Most electronics and computer components run on DC, usually either 5V or 12V. But since The Grid is AC (Alternating Current), they come equipped with power supplies that go from 100-240V down to DC. That's why your laptop has a "brick" power supply, switching the power from say 230V AC to 19.2V DC.
Our computers are all 12V or, even better, 6-26V DC. This means they can receive power when the batteries are low (and output is about 11V) or use truck batteries which are 24V.
The problem is monitors always have an AC "brick" built inside so if you are on solar power you have to use an inverter and go:
- From Solar > 12V DC Battery > AC Inverter (up to 23oV) > AC Monitor > Back down to DC components inside monitor.
Wasting 10-15% of power you go from AC to DC or DC to AC. Ideally you could just bin the AC power supply of the monitor and go:
- From Solar > 12V DC Battery > DC Monitor
Samsung appears to have done with this with their new P2070 monitor though the reason for making the PSU external is to make the monitor extra thin.
Schools in rural Nigeria are probably the last thing on the minds of Samsung engineers but it's so much less expensive than the crappy 12V 10" 800 x 600 Chinese monitors that sell for £150 to £200 on eBay and Car PC websites. And it doesn't require difficult linux drivers like the USB monitors do.
It actually has a great spec: 20", 1600 x 900 Resolution, 2ms response rate, 50,000:1 Contrast Ratio. I'll have one in on Monday and post the video review next week. It only has a DVI port which means it will work with our best-selling Aleutia T1 and our H-Series but not crappy thin client type PCs like the Inveneo or Linutop.
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.
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?
