I've been trying some out. I've been thinking about maybe building them and selling them, configured for people like us weather nuts that use them for 24x7 applications. A normal "power efficient" desktop might draw 60 watts. But what I'm looking at is drawing around 5 watts. It's true that it costs more when you just look at bang for the buck. But at 15 cents a kilowatt hour, that 55 watt difference is about $72 per year in electricity cost. When you compare it to a full blown desktop system, a super low power PC could pay for itself in 2 years. The problem with buying an out of the box mini-itx is that they are often configured for media applications. That's not necessarily the same configuration as I would want for a dedicated weather station pc. What I would want is something that has a
super low power draw (<8 watts), is entirely solid state, has no fans, and does not generate much heat. In addition, it must have all the desired ports (serial, usb, vga, ethernet, keyboard/mouse) as well as the option for wireless. Such a box is entirely possibly for around $250 with linux, and around $339 with Windows XP (legal copy). That's for a ready to go box that only needs to be hooked up to a monitor and keyboard, and only draws about 5 watts (an important point). If you relax the standards to be in the 30 watt range, you can lower the price about $60 because those motherboards are cheaper. Don't quote me on these prices. They're off the top of my head. Personally, I think they're a great idea. They wouldn't replace your normal computer. They would just free them from 24x7 operation so you could shut them off when you're not sitting in front of them, and save a bunch of kilowatts.
A note on the NSLU2. It is a great idea except for a couple things. First and foremost, it has what I consider a fatal design flaw for a 24x7 device. If it temporarily loses power, it reverts to the power off state when electricity comes back on. You have to manually press the soft power switch to turn it back on. There is a workaround, but it requires a fair amount of soldering and wiring. The other thing is that it is a very minimally capable unit as far as RAM and processor are concerned, and is not something you would ever even try putting something like windows on. I have a box on my desk right now that that does everything the NSLU2 can do, has more memory (128MB), more CPU power, has an Intel x86 compatible processor, VGA port, 2 serial ports, 4 USB ports, ethernet, keyboard/mouse port, has a mini-pci slot inside, is quite small, draws 3 to 4 watts, costs around $100. Not enough power to run windows (but I've run WinCE on it), but plenty for basic linux. So if something like the NSLU2 is what you're looking for, there are other options out there.
Steve
SoftWx