Low Powered Mini-Server for the Masses

ServerSam writes "Sudhian has a review up on EmergeCore's "IT in a Box" IT100. Designed for small business use, it comes equipped with a Transmeta Crusoe 533MHz, 128MB RAM, 20GB IBM TravelStar, 802.11b Access Point, and boots from a 32MB Flash card. The IT100 is powered by a 60 watt external PSU and is smaller than a PS2."

Ripping off

[MikeyG79]

$1400.. I'll build my own mini tower or go out and buy something much more powerful... like a 2.2GHz w/ 1gig

The things people get ripped off with these days.

Re:Already slashdotted...

[metlin]

Details are available on their forum.

Link here to the Sudhian Forum [sudhian.com].

If the current state of their server is any indication of this thing's performance, its sad :)

Re:Wish the link wasn't Slashdotted.

[metlin]

Not really. Its a Transmeta 533. Even one of those el-cheapo $199 things from Walmart or an old Celeron or P3 would give this thing a run for its money.

At $1150 (?) and odd, it really isn't worth it. You're better off building your own mail server from scratch. Cheaper and better than this.

Re:Slashdotted Already?

[L0C0loco]

There is some info and a less than glowing review Here [com.com].

Enjoy

Re:"The IT100 did it all at a cost of $1,395"

[GrenDel Fuego]

I think the main problem here is the slashdot headline, not the product itself.

At $1,395 this is hardly a "mini-server for the masses". To me that implies personal use. This is the mini-server for small businesses.

Re:Wish the link wasn't Slashdotted.

[Gleef]

Some really nifty quiet machines at nOrhTec [norhtec.com]. Their MicroServers are smaller than any cable modems I've seen.

Lots of small (but bigger than the MicroServer), low power machines at Mini-ITX [mini-itx.com]

They also believe

[rm007]

What matters is that most people who make business decisions to use commercial software believe that the vendor is liable

They also believe, or at least behave according to, the old chestnut "no one ever got fired for buying IBM" (substitute well known brand in any technology realted field for "IBM" to adapt this to any category). Those in large organizations don't want to take risks that will jeopardize their careers, but at least they are more likely to have IT departments to make recommendations. In small organizations, there is neither the in-house expertise nor often the willingness to spend on outside advice. While they may not know just how little they know, they calculate risk on the basis of what little they do know and they know the Apple and Mircrosoft brands.

Even lower power home server (for the tinkerer)

[Anonymous Coward]

I run a headless embedded server at my house, which uses 4 Watts of power (verified with my Kill-O-Watt meter). It has less processing power (equivalent to a Pentium 133MHz)

I purchased the device from embeddedx86.com [embeddedx86.com]. The model is TS-5400. You can see a picture of my finished server here [virosa.net] and here [virosa.net]. (It's in a boring-as-hell grey box... with a CD next to it for comparison - it's to the left of the access point)

It runs Apache (with PHP extensions), NAT masquerading, and provided me with a great introduction to embedded systems (it's architecture is almost identical to standard x86, so it's an easy starting point). Even though it's much less powerful than the transmeta powered box in the article, you can still do a lot of useful stuff with it!

Re:Just think what a geek can do with $1100 these

[drinkypoo]

I don't think you understand how ridiculous this really is. People only need to save space like that when they're on a small boat, in a car, or something like that. You can get (aka, I just got) a Gigabyte nForce2 motherboard with everything but video onboard (including gigE, 1394, ATA RAID, SATA RAID, USB2) for $110. And an Athlon XP 2500+ for $100 or so. All told I paid about $240 shipped. $200 will get you a ~160GB hard drive; get two of them so you can mirror, and you're up to $650. 512MB of DDR333 is $80 or so, $730. A DVD-RW ($110) and a decent case with 400W PS ($100) bring us up to $940. Floppy drive (for emergencies), cheapie video card, and cheap keyboard and mouse will round this out to a complete server system with RAID-protected data, a backup solution for the data which absolutely positively must be protected and taken offsite (most people do not have data files larger than 4.7GB) and not just that, it has enough processor and memory to do probably anything you want to do in a small business. I stress that this is a complete solution; you could spend much less and get much less which would still be plenty for most people.

Too much work for you? Go to geeks.com and pick up some refurb'd HP desktops for $500 each, with 17" monitors, CDRW, DVD-ROM, 120-160GB disks, keyboard, mouse, fucken speakers fer chrissakes... and a ~2.2 GHz celery chip.

The fact is that the vast majority of people have space to put a full size computer for a server. It's only in very unusual environments where space matters so much that your only server must be smaller than a shoebox. Aside from such special cases, assuming anyone buys this device, it will mostly be people who don't understand computers, and think it looks really neat.

Re:My 486 gateway is only 24 watts!

[arivanov]

It is a standard PSU. Usually used in the ITX world. Actual consumptionis likely to be lower. While at it you can make the same system from standard components at LinItx.com (using Via instead of Crusoe) for a fraction of the cost.

Re:Slashdotted Already?

[Hektor_Troy]

Less than glowing?

hrmm ...

Overall recommendation: Recommended

Editors' rating: 7.6 out of 10 (Good)

Setup and ease of use: 8 out of 10

Features and security: 8 out of 10

Performance: 7 out of 10

Service and support: 7 out of 10

Okay, I guess I'm stupid. 5 out of 10 would be average, more than that would be positive, and an average of 7.6 puts it in the top 25%.

When did anything less than 9 out of 10 become crappy?

Re:More info on your LCD vs CRT comment...

[Anonymous Coward]

LCD's do have a fixed resolution but can emulate lower resolutions if they divide evenly into the native one.

LCD's do have some limitations. They cannot do true white. They therefore cannot do colors accurately. If you are doing desktop publishing you won't be using an LCD monitor.

CRT's and LCD's both have pretty high resolution ceilings but LCD's will cost you a lot more to get there. Here at school we've got some IBM LCD monitors that go 3400 x 2400 or somesuch but are over $8,000. A comparable CRT will still run you a couple thousand.

Latency issues with LCD monitors can be an issue and it is noticable. CRT does not have latency problems but many people claim with newer / more expensive LCD monitors it doesn't bother them even when gaming. I'm a little sensitive but thankfully I don't game.

LCD monitors have accurate geometry. A square is a square. CRT monitors need to be calibrated for accurate geometry and the picture can become distorted over time or by a magnetic field. This can be very important depending on what you're doing.

LCD monitors have significantly less radiation than CRT. They also produce significantly less heat and consume less energy. A 21" CRT can warm a room.

Basically it comes down to this. Unless you do pre-press desktop publishing there's probably an LCD monitor for you. The costs are about the same now and the reasons to go LCD largely outweigh the reasons otherwise not to.

Re:Not just size

[tuffy]

Where do I get a solid state monitor?

Here's [viewsonic.com] a few.

Re:"The IT100 did it all at a cost of $1,395"

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice timing. I was on hold with Newegg to place an order when I read your post so I asked them. The order person transfered me to a manager. She said it was because of the huge number of returns. She said returns on RAM, motherboards, and processors was killing them, but returns on the few ITX boards they sold would have killed them if they had kept it up. She said most of the ITX boards they sold came back since the Via boards are so horrible at compatibility. She said the usual comments were "can't get X Windows to run," "can't get the network adapter to work," "can't get the sound card to work," and so on. Every single one of those pieces are proprietary on the Via ITX boards.

I've been a Linux user for over 10 years, and I've used X Windows on PC's for 9 years, but it still took me two entire days to get X Windows to work on the Via garbage. You don't even get the source to their X Win driver so you have to upgrade or downgrade to the version of X Win that they demand you to. For us, we have a company standard to use Debian, so we can't use Via boards. Where my wife works, they use a newer version of X Win for their ERP software than Via allows you to, so they can't use them. Via is shooting themselves in the foot and screwing customers and dealers in the process with their proprietary garbage. The Newegg manager's statement was the reason I expected.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:"The IT100 did it all at a cost of $1,395"

[paxmark1]

I was in RMA hell for 12 weeks with a via-itx. I would go back to it, but bottom feeding ECS said board had been problems and they gave me a P-4 barebones with my old hard drive back. VIA - itx still have a few kinks to work out on the itx line and their linux support and drivers still needs help - just look on the via-arena. A different video than a C-media or whatever problematic video chip they attach to the board that would work seamlessly with XFree86 would be nice and why bundle a winmodem with a distro empty machine. The USB driver was very rocky from the start, finally installing the driver via Win98 (I dual boot, I have people from all over the planet using my machine here at a L'Arche house) finally fixed that, etc. etc. little niggling things. Oh not to mention the malloc stuff in compiles, and the pickiness of distros to correctly identify the VIA cyrix chip. So it is $1395 USD. If it works out of the box and functions 24/7, well, hopefully the price will go down. The ITX is not just a walk down the park. It is sweet, but a pain to get linux (or FreeBSD for that manner, I had problems withthat also) just exactly the way you want it and some of the companies distributing it do not have stellar track records for service. Shalom, Mark