Fit for Purpose
A look at some of the tiny solutions presently availableIn case you have
been living in a cage for the past decade you should know that the price of
your heating bills has been creeping up and going through the roof (in some
case literally!). The radiator in the Professional Imagemaker office has not
been turned on for over 10 years, such is the computing power stacked up in
the room. They deliver about a kilowatt of heat when everything is going at
full bore, enough to keep us warm even in winter and something of a trial in
a hot summer. Once we became aware of the bills sliding upwards (have you
noticed that prices rise with the price of oil but never fall back with it –
funny that?) we got hold of some energy meters and looked at the economics.
The results were alarming, with really big power supplies (our smallest is
750watt) and as many as five machines on at any one time, four printers, a
scanner, three CRTs and a massive uninterruptible power supply, it was mall
wonder that we were warm and that Scottish Power were rubbing their hands in
glee! An obvious solution is to turn the machines off or put the computers
into hibernation mode. This carries consequences though; Windows machines
are so poor at hibernating or starting from scratch that the temptation is
to leave them running. This tardiness is a real problem. If a telephone
query of any description comes in and the machine containing the information
is shut down, the caller has a wait of at least three or four minutes while
Windows grinds into life. To the caller this seems like an eternity and
there is only so much small talk you can engage in with strangers! Another
problem is that automated backups are set to kick in at unsociable hours
when machines are likely to be idle.
This then is the background against which we purchased
energy meters and set about measuring a number of small, low-cost,
low-energy devices that might be of use for fulltime (ie non-stop)
operation. The trigger was the arrival of the CompuLab Fit-PC2 (Distributed
in the UK by Anders Electronics) a machine that is so tiny that nobody
thinks it is a computer at all – read on.
We've had a number of computers through the door in the last couple of
months, but by far the smallest box to arrive contained a Fit-PC2. If they'd
put the packaging itself in a jiffy bag it may well have actually gone
through the letterbox!
As you can see from the photographs, it's diminutive; when we showed the
unit to a couple of people and asked them to guess what it was, a computer
didn't figure in the answers.
We decided to investigate if this minuscule PC really could perform the
duties of a social-sector, client-viewing machine, driving a projector or
perhaps a large LCD screen. The main attraction is that you could hide it
almost anywhere (subject to ventilation so its fanless case stays cool), and
leave it on 24/7, as it uses less electricity running at full power than
some PCs use when turned off.
The processor in this turbo model is an Intel Atom Z530 running at 1.6GHz –
the same series of processor chip you'll find in many netbooks. With 1GB of
RAM and a 160GB laptop hard disk running Windows XP Home, it is perfectly
adequate for running slideshows using FastStone or Pictures2Exe, but unlike
other netbooks or nettops, it will even handle most high-definition video.
We tested using a monitor at 1280x720 and two FullHD (1920x1080) video
trailers; it was smooth and clear, even in demanding scenes, even whilst
scaling down the content to fit. Playing back 2D content such as image
slideshows it was good. Transitions in pictures2exe were smooth, the music
played without a hitch, and the image quality was good. For general purpose
browsing it also performed well, starting Firefox and rendering websites
snappily. It also played the BBC's iPlayer video content well, both in the
window and fullscreen, showing it's quite a capable little computer. Certain
videos on Youtube flummoxed it, probably down to codec differences, but most
content was handled OK.
To give you a rough idea of the performance, some of the timings we
collected are shown in the table on the right.
We should explain that measuring power consumption is actually quite tricky!
Manufacturers often quote their figures excluding power supply and
transformer losses, meaning they can be reported 20% or more lower than they
actually are. Here we quote two figures, the first comes from a £20 'Power
Meter Plug', commonly available from the likes of Maplin. The second reading
is obtained directly from the live wire (don't try this at home), using at
least two different meters to provide a comparison check against each other.
Design and Build Quality
The Fit-PC2 scores very highly in this department. The case is all-aluminium
and is designed to dissipate the heat like a large heatsink. It gets fairly
hot to the touch, but the surrounding air doesn't heat up noticably. All the
heat is piped up to the top of the unit where it can naturally rise away
from it; the bottom remains cooler and this is sensibly where the hard disk
is! Disk drives are not fond of heat, so placing this underneath the hotter
components is the correct location.
The complete lack of fans is a welcome feature. Fans only ever make noise,
and as they get older, they generally get louder. With the Fit-PC2's hard
drive the only source of noise, you really have to look at the lights to
tell if it's on!
Other uses
Electronic advertising screens in the shop or studio window is another ideal
scenario where the Fit-PC2 could be deployed. Unlike many desktop PCs and
nettops such as the Acer, the Fit-PC2 is designed from the outset to run
24/7 without problems.
The third use of such a low-powered computer would be to run a small network
server. Our preference here would be to use Ubuntu Linux, which CompuLab
will even pre-install. We opted for the latest version 9.04, and tested both
the Desktop and Server edition. These both ran quickly and there were no
driver issues at all, which is very refreshing!
Video Performance
Quantum of Solace and Harry Potter (Half Blood Prince) Trailers at 1080p:
Ran at 1920x1200, but there was slight tearing and the video wasn't smooth.
Dropping the resolution to 1280x1024 fixed this. Strangely, running it at
1280x720 the video streched to fit the entire screen, and the performance
wasn't as good.
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