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).
Fanless, Intel Atom 330 PC with DVI, 12V DC Input
The Aleutia team has been working on a fascinating project recently for a client in the hotel industry. Any PC that goes ito a five star room is going to have be small and silent but this one has to offer MPEG4 decoding, HDCP, and 1080p playback as well as DVI/HDMI output and ideally optical output.
We've actually achieved this (see my next post) though with the Achilles caveat of a fan, albeit a 13dB fan and we ultimately want to go fanless.
The "H1" system pictured is a powered by two Intel Atom 1.6GHz processors. Though Intel brands this as Dual Core, the chips are actually on a seperate die and feature individual hyper threading - on Ubuntu this shows ups as 4 cores (a quad core Atom?). (Similarly the Intel Atom is just a rebranded Centrino, albeit at a great price).
It features Gigabit Lan, 2GB of 667MHz DDR2 RAM, and a coral reef of heatsinks to dissipate CPU heat, Northbridge heat, and more heat coming from an Ati 2400 GPU which provides DVI output and should shortly offer 1080p playback.
2.5" Drive slot means you can go up 500GB at 5400RPM (about £90 these days) or 250GB at 7200RPM (about £60).
Completely silent, fanless, wall-mountable, and great as a Boxee box, HTPC, or just a powerful home/office workstation.
We'll be selling it shortly without the PCI slot populated for customers who can get by with VGA output.
Measures: 190 x 205 x 83mm.
Author's Note: In the end we decided the PCI interface was too mediocre for decent graphics and the onboard GMA 950 cannot drive HD. The H1 standard (single core Atom, onboard Nvidia 9400) can do 1080p playback but little else so we're working on an Aleutia H3 which will combine a fanless AMD Sempron 140 2.8GHz (45W) with Geforce 8200 chipset. (This is a completely new Sempron - much faster with 1MB L2 Cache.)