Cheap low power home server options
April 13, 2008 by jt
Unfortunately my CurrentCost meter only gets hooked up to an aging ThinkPad 240 on a time-share arrangement with Jo; she is currently cursing about how slow the web is, so my graph on the power meter page is blank. Other people have a more reliable connection and are tracking down 3KW spikes and 100watt-ish blips. Good excuse for a(nother) gadget I reckon!
Current thoughts, in roughly ascending price order:
- SLUG: £57 (as recommended by @andysc)
- Netvoyager LX-1000: £130
- MicroClient Jr.: $214 (same case as above but includes 2 RS232 ports which is nice. Not sure I can be bothered with importing one… but more than one? Maybe.)
Out of the running (probably) are:
- Minifsk: $200+ (Looks neat and claims to have a serial port but in the US again)
- TinyTuxBox: cheapest seems to be about £193
- Asus EEE PC: better value at around £200?
- Linutop 1: €250+
And finally, Dale suggested a Pocket PC option earlier and Steve suggested an ASUS WL-500g. I must admit I’ve not looked in to either of those. I do have a Palm V kicking around but not sure that’d be up to the job! I also have a Linksys WAG354G but that is gainfully employed and doesn’t have any USB/Serial ports.
Decisions decisions.
Good information. Thanks!
One thing to add to the cost of the SLUG is an external usb-powered Hard Disk as using a USB key ring can go wrong - http://twitter.com/andysc/statuses/788906652
This one looks pretty good (and ebuyer have SLUGs too: http://www.ebuyer.com/product/126612
Well I’m some of the way there… hooked up to an old Linux box, but having some issues on the serial comms side at the moment. Hopefully it won’t be too long before I can join the graph.
You’ll probably graphing before I’m back on there, although I’ve taken the plunge and gone for the Netvoyager option above, so hope to have a new toy soon.
Now I know that a slug is clearly the way to go but I convinced myself with two good reasons not to pick it this time:
1. Other than the afore mentioned Thinkpad 240, I don’t have a computer at home! So something I can use to experiment with home automation stuff when Jo has nabbed the laptop would be good.
2. It’s my birthday soon… so I can ask for a slug to use as the production system!
Good point about the HDD Rich- I have a handy external drive already which I can use for that.
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