Thanks to all of you who replied with suggestions about hardware for
the cheap appliance I'm talking about working on. I thought I'd
summarize the responses for easy reference (for me, my colleague,
and why not share it with you all too!).
>From Mark Krenz:
> Perhaps a Beagle Board would be an option: http://beagleboard.org/
I was so glad I'd asked BLUG about this just from this first
response. These look really cool. My gut feeling is that for our
proposed application there'd be too much labor involved per machine,
plus the end cost is going to be very similar to the EEE Touch screen
thing. But, still, I love knowing about things like this.
>From Chris Colvard
>You might also check out mini-ITX motherboards: http://www.mini-box.com/
Similar to the beagle board, looks extremely cool, makes me dream
about building waterproof devices for all kinds of weird
applications. But, also probably not-quite-cheap-enough and
too-much-labor for my current project.
>From Michael Schultheiss
>K-mart has Android tablets for $179.99: http://bit.ly/dwfUaV
>From Jonathan North Washington
>..Android pads for as low as $129.99: http://bit.ly/93oVKD
These are tempting, the fact that they are cheap and include a touch
screen already make them very attractive. The biggest problem is that
the screen is only 7" big. There are a lot of 7" android devices. I
can't picture them. My droid and other smart phones are down around
4", and I've seen lots of tablet like things at 10" and above (iPad,
my netbook, etc). But, I can't remember seeing anyone using something
7". Any clues?
10" Droid tablets are just starting to be released. There's a fair
amount of buzz about the Advent Vega, which is just being released in
the UK for just under $400 (not yet available in the US). Asus is
apparently on the verge of releasing one too. Hopefully in a few
months there will be lots of options and the prices will come down
even more.
>From Mark Warner
>You can buy pallets of old P-IIIs for next to nothing on eBay.
Wow. This was a great tip. The most questionable part of that
statement, actually, is the P-III part. I found P-IVs much easier,
and they were still amazingly cheap. Apparently the search term to
use is "LOT" as in "LOT OF 10 pentium 4 2.8 GHZ P4, 512 DDR, CDROM"
(starting bid $870, 0 bids so far, ends tomorrow evening). Or "Lot of
34 Dell Optiplex GX260 PC Computer P4 40GB" (Buy it now
$1,359.96.. that's $40 each!! shipping will probably make it a bit more,
but still). Mostly I'm averse to used hardware because we want the
machines to be reliable, nearly identical, and require little labor to
set up. Buying lots of nearly identical hardware like this should
address those concerns. And the prices are amazing.
>From Lord Drachenblut
>This might be a viable option http://www.norhtec.com/
Since the mid '90s I've been continuously surprised that network
computing never took off. Good to know that people are still making
these. Again, I can imagine applications for this that I would love.
However, I don't think it's my current application. I think these
would sit there with no network connection and panic. :)
Thanks VERY MUCH to everyone for your feedback!! It was extremely
helpful.
David
On Wed, Oct 27, 2010 at 02:33:40PM -0400, David Ernst wrote:
>General question, only tangentially linux related:
>
>I was talking with a colleague about the possibility of building a
>dedicated appliance for a certain application. They'd need to deploy
>a number of them, so they'd like them to be inexpensive. It would use
>a touch screen monitor, not necessarily have any networking, and not
>need impressive computing power. I thought "my netbook could do it",
>but then I thought, my netbook has all kind of things that we don't
>need, like fold-up portability, a webcam, etc. And we definitely
>wouldn't need the latest-greatest processor speed either. Although we
>wouldn't want used equipment either...
>
>So, the question basically comes down to: what's the cheapest system
>you could buy/build that would
>
>* run linux
>* attach to a monitor
>* have usb ports
>
>We really wouldn't need a Hard Drive, a 16G SD card would be fine.
>
>The simple, easy solution would be to get something like this:
>
>http://www.amazon.com/ASUS-ETP1602C-BK-X0163-Touch-Screen-Desktop/dp/B002VY8OS8
>
>so, if we can't significantly beat $380, there's no use. And that's
>including the touchscreen monitor, which will be at least $100, so
>with no monitor it's gotta be down well below $300, preferably below
>$200. But, couldn't you get a motherboard, a not-super-fast CPU, some
>kind of a case, and a USB Interface for less than that? Thoughts?
>
>Another option is an iPad, or preferably a iPad-like Android device,
>which seem to be "soon but not quite yet". Thoughts on those?
>
>David
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