OT: Lowest-power small server solutions

[Roger Merchberger]

Rumor has it that Chuck Guzis may have mentioned these words:
>On 11/1/2005 at 12:45 PM Paul Koning wrote:
>
> >How about an old laptop?   UPS built-in... :-)
>
>Interesting idea, but I don't have a lot of faith in a laptop holding up
>under a 24x7x365 operating schedule.

Depends on the age/build quality of said laptop. There are a lot of 
low-power laptops that don't get too hot with 100% duty cycles, my Fujitsu 
Lifebook P2120 (933 Mhz Crusoe / 512Meg RAM) is certainly fine with it - 
sits *comfortably* on my lap whilst recompiling Linux.

[[ Yea, the whole Linux, glibc, gcc, all libraries, X, etc. ;-) ]]

While kewl [[ and somewhat unique, now that Transmeta quit makin' CPUs :-( 
]]  certainly offtopic.

I think there are some ontopic Panasonic Toughbooks which should be able to 
handle anything, but wouldn't be fast enough for your needs.

>   They're not built for that type of
>operation and I think that heat buildup would eventually do them in.

Again, some are. Some are designed to wick away that heat thru the 
operator's legs, :-) but the CPU should be fine, as long as the fan works 
fine & the cooling grates are clear. For your setup, I doubt the CPU is the 
bottleneck anyway, unless your SpamAssassin is getting hit *hard*, and if 
it is, you should be looking for quite a bit more of an upgrade than what 
you have now.

I wouldn't try it with just 'any' laptop, but a little research first 
should find several models of laptop that could /potentially/ suit your needs.

Laterz,
Roger "Merch" Merchberger

--
Roger "Merch" Merchberger  --  SysAdmin, Iceberg Computers
zmerch at 30below.com

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