I still dislike Starbucks' tendency to scorch their beans Matter of taste. I love dark roast (Italian over French). I understand that Starbucks recently tried to push a lighter roast, but went back to the darker (more expensive) stuff because their customers preferred it. I simply can't imagine a g...

How about competitive pressure. They're losing an opportunity to beat the atom. I think Via had better be able to ship product immediately or they will lose. Intel's ( very cheap to fab ) dual core Atom 330 will ship in September! A new, presumably dirt cheap, D945GCLF2 mini-ITX board will also shi...

Like the Atom 230, the Atom 330 uses 45nm technology, features a 533MHz frontside bus, and is designed to work with Intel's 945GC chipset (the 82945GC northbridge and 82801GB southbridge). Unlike the Atom 230, however, the Atom 330 features dual cores, plus second-level cache that has been doubled ...

Like its Atom 230 sibling, the Atom 330 is based on Intel's 45nm fab process and will incorporate HyperThreading technology -- in the case of the Atom 330, the processor will appear to have four cores within the operating system. According to Register Hardware, the dual core Atom 330 processors wil...

Product VIA Nano Verdict On paper and in testing, VIA's Nano beats Intel's Atom hands down. But the pricing may kill it as a competitor. Suggested Price TBC Preview The mobo in our pics may look like a VIA SN18000G, which sells for about £150 with a 1.8GHz C7 processor, but it’s more exciting: i...

VIA quits motherboard chipset business VIA is now focusing on x86 processors and the integrated motherboard market, rather than chipsets for third-party CPUs... http://www.custompc.co.uk/news/604608/via-quits-motherboard-chipset-business.html More -- http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/0...

I was pleasantly surprised to see how well the Nano CPU compared to the Atom in some of the early reviews cited in http://via.com.tw/en/index.jsp Of course, the reviews are based on engineering samples and employed old C7 boards. Also, the reviews are preliminary and not as detailed as one might lik...

Ya I agree, the cheapest path is really the frys combos for $70-80 which include mobo and cpu. These deals only apply if you live near a Fry's store and are able to be a "walk in" customer. The Fry's website never has the sorts of deals I saw in the Fry's ads in the SJ Mercury News. Looks like it i...

Nice set of posts, Isaac. I'll try it as soon as I upgrade my antique machine. You might consider sharing it via tuxmachines.org (or any of the howto or lxer-type link sites) so that more people can benefit. E.g., http://www.tuxmachines.org/node/414 (Great site, lots of useful articles linked every ...

Greetings, Where can I buy a Socket 939 motherboard? NewEgg lists just one from ECS -- and it is out of stock...Google is yielding virtually nothing -- lots of S939 CPU's, but no motherboards to put them in. :? I did a search with -- http://www.google.com/products?q=motherboard+and+%22socket+939%22...

Early days, prototype boxes, virtually no specs, but... the MSI looks like a better bet than the ASUS EBOX or Shuttle K45xx, at least to me. MSI WIND PC desktops are powered by their Micro-ATX based MS-7314 Wind Board motherboard which is passively cooled with a large aluminum heatsink covering the ...

ASUS Eee Box: Preview & Intel's Atom Benchmarked - http://www.silentpcreview.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=416047 The Eee Box uses the desktop implementation of the Intel Atom processor which signifies two things: 1) it uses a desktop chipset, in this case the 945G, and 2) the Atom’s FSB is fused to...

Nine page article, lots of detail, good pictures.

[quote]The Eee Box is effectively a headless notebook with no keyboard/mouse. In fact, the new version of the Eee PC features the exact same hardware configuration as the Eee Box - just in notebook form. Using notebook components in a “desktopâ€

The EEE Box thing uses the mobile variant of chipset I believe... If the reports of the EBOX B202 using the 945GSE are accurate, you are correct. The Centrino Atom platform will feature an Intel Atom processor, an Intel 945GSE chipset—which comes complete with integrated graphics... http://www.bi...

My main reason for buying was a cheap upgrade to my firewall box... The more I learn, the more convinced I am that another approach might yield better results and for comparable costs -- using a no-moving-parts server board running 7-10 watts. When you add up all the costs in building a quiet D945G...

It seems that the D945GCLF was intended for low-priced & emerging markets, rather than the industrial or enthusiast markets.

Here's the ASUS EBOX B202 SFF take on the same theme --
viewtopic.php?t=48452

65 watt power brick, gigabit LAN, 945GSE + ICH7M. More info -- US Configurations and MSRP: $269 - 1GB memory + 80GB HDD Linux edition $299 - 1GB memory + 80GB HDD XP edition $299 - 2GB memory + 160GB HDD Linux edition http://www.hothardware.com/News/ASUS_Eee_Box_B202_Details_Emerge/ http://news.cnet...

Short, informative article by Anand Lal Shimpi. Nice picture gallery. ... The machine I received features a 1.6GHz Intel Atom processor paired with an Intel 945G chipset, 1GB of DDR2-667 memory (a single SO-DIMM module is installed) and a 160GB Seagate Momentus 5400.4 2.5" SATA hard drive. There is ...

Great posts, lowpowercomputing. Thank you. I also ask myself: Why did Intel combine the Atom, which is a very efficient CPU, with the power-hungry 945GC+GMA950 on that board? Sure this makes sure that the board'll work fine with Windows, Linux etc. and even Mac OS X, but it drives up the power consu...

Reencoding videos is the key to play them smoothly on slower computers. Thanks for the scripts. I've been reencoding some downloaded videos to make them usable. Your scripts make the process easier. Adobe Flash 9 is a bit addictive. Unfortunately, it appears to have upped the CPU requirements in co...

I disagree. At this point, anyone using such an old computer is probably a hobbyist who likes "resurrecting" old hardware. I'm running full blown Debian 4.0 on my cute old Toshiba Libretto 70CT (Pentium 120mhz, 32megs of RAM). Not everyone has your skills, Isaac! I'd even assert that not everyone w...

UK's Tranquil PC Taking Orders for Atom-based Home Servers Sunday, May 25, 2008 7:20 PM PDT Tranquil PC, a computer maker in the U.K., is taking orders for two home servers based on Intel's upcoming Atom processor, formerly called Diamondville. The two home servers, the T7-HSAi and T2-WHS-A3i, are ...

Another Review: Lightweight Linux distributions Good article, although the author was not always specific about the versions tested. Article reviewed Zenwalk 5.0. Might want to look at Zenwalk 5.2 Beta, as it is a significant update -- http://distrowatch.com/?newsid=04906 http://www.phoronix.com/sc...

try to get a proper Linux server config with Debian (his preference, I'm a SWer myself). Not planning on a swap as I imaging the 4GB memory size should suffice. Debian is an especially good choice if you can get some help getting it configured! :) Swap should be unnecessary. Lots of folks have work...

There's nothing else that could be considered an improvement, unlike the newer G45/Q45 mini-itx boards, which look like a massive jump. You must not be a Linux user... :) Losing the SiS chipset is a huge advantage over the D201 series, at least for Linux users. There were no good Linux drivers for ...

You've probably heard of Journaling Flash File System (JFFS) and Yet Another Flash File System (YAFFS), but do you know what it means to have a file system that assumes an underlying flash device? This article introduces you to flash file systems for Linux®, explores how they care for their underl...

I got a C2D config coming in for server duty. Going to setup Linux on a Compaq Flash card for the OS. Interesting. Will you have a swap partition? If so, where -- CF or HD? Where will /var be mounted -- CF, HD, or ramdisk? How will you manage flash wear? Small desktops distros like the Asus EEE PC,...

the wierd thing is, the fan is on the northbridge. the cpu is under that little heatsink. its just a 945g chipset, so i'm assuming theres plenty of passive hetasinks that could have worked (my intel microATX g31 board has no fan and most 945g boards do not either). so i dont get why intel put a fan...

With 128+ megs of RAM, you do not need to use a limited lightweight distribution True enough. However, the smaller the footprint, the less paging. Generally, old, slow hardware has poor memory bandwidth and slow disks. Minimizing working set & paging has a significant impact on performance. Running...