suggestions

[dishe]

hi folks-
I've been reading up on here, trying to make the most energy efficient (and reasonably priced) setup for my MJ as possible. Most of you folks have much more experience at exactly what I'm trying to do, so I was hoping I could get some advice/pointers.

Currently, I'm running my MJ on an old Pentium III laptop with 128mb over wifi. The laptop does not run XP terribly smoothly, however MJ works fairly well all things considered (however I wonder how many of my little service "hiccups" are caused by an underpowered box like this).
ThinClients sound like a good choice, but I need one that is WiFi ready since I'm not planning on running a lan cable over to where I want my phone line to be based.
How hard is it to have a WiFi enabled thinclient?

Also, are thinclients powerful enough to playback video if I throw a screen on it? I'm not talking about high def or anything, but it would be nice to have a mini-media center running on one. Thinclient or not, it seems like a colossal waste to have a full-blown winXP box running for just the phone line so I'm wondering if it could serve some double duty.

Any suggestions? As someone else already mentioned, the Asus EEE PC and EEE box approach this territory and can handle what I'm describing, however they are slightly more expensive and not quite as energy efficient (my wife's EEE 701 uses 15-20watts on average). Also, I like the idea of an efficient bloatware-less XPe machine.

[maine-iac]

Maybe try a USB/WIFI adapter on a thin client? It worked for me for a while.

[tony]

... trying to make the most energy efficient (and reasonably priced) setup for my MJ as possible.

...but I need one that is WiFi ready since I'm not planning on running a lan cable over to where I want my phone line to be based.

Hi,
Your last question first, I have a wifi enabled TC for the guest bedroom. It's just a matter of loading the wifi adapter driver.

But MJ does work better with a wired connection rather than over wifi. Can you move your laptop so you can have a wired connection then use a cordless phone to get the phone closer to where you need it? I have the TC in the basement and a cordless handset upstairs.

For energy savings, consider that the payback time to go to a lower consumption computer is a long time. Say a TC costs $100. The TC will consume about 9 watts. My laptops consume about 22 watts so a difference of 13 watts. At 7 cents per kW.hour, it would take you 12.5 years in energy savings to pay back your investment in a TC. I suggest just keep using your laptop and look for energy savings elsewhere that have better paybacks, such as insulating your water tank or do some more draft proofing.

[dishe]

But MJ does work better with a wired connection rather than over wifi. Can you move your laptop so you can have a wired connection then use a cordless phone to get the phone closer to where you need it? I have the TC in the basement and a cordless handset upstairs.

I thought about that (my router is also in the basement), however I want to use the answering machine on the base, and having that downstairs is a bit of a pain (on most multi-line handsets, the base unit and answering machine are in the same box).

For energy savings, consider that the payback time to go to a lower consumption computer is a long time. Say a TC costs $100. The TC will consume about 9 watts. My laptops consume about 22 watts so a difference of 13 watts. At 7 cents per kW.hour, it would take you 12.5 years in energy savings to pay back your investment in a TC. I suggest just keep using your laptop and look for energy savings elsewhere that have better paybacks, such as insulating your water tank or do some more draft proofing.

At my current rates, that 13 extra watts costs me about $16 per year. Still, have to use it for several years to make back the $100, but its not like my laptop is doing such a great job to begin with.
As I said, the poor thing is a pIII 500 mhz with 128mb running XP. The OS can't handle too much on there (I think it originally shipped with win98), and I'd like to replace it with something a little bit more efficient in the hopes that maybe it will produce consistently better sound quality as well.
I was considering using my wife's EEE Pc, but then she would have to disconnect our phone line if she wants to take the EEE out. Also, the EEE is currently still running its default Xandros linux OS.
The TCs people are talking about here have better specs to begin with, and use less than half the power of my current laptop. And, it will fit into a corner better as well. Sounds like it is worth $100 if you ask me, especially if it can be used a media client as well.

[tony]

The TCs people are talking about here have better specs to begin with, and use less than half the power of my current laptop. And, it will fit into a corner better as well. Sounds like it is worth $100 if you ask me, especially if it can be used a media client as well.

Despite the poor payback I also went with a TC, a T5700, to replace a laptop that was running MJ. Mind you the laptop was starting to fail. The TC sits there quietly serving up MJ and streaming music. The 5700 is more than adequate for MJ.

I have another TC a 5710 with a bit more processing power plus an expansion bay to take a PCI card. I'm thinking of adding an external harddrive and turning it into a PVR/DVR, but can't find a video card that run with the limited processing and memory in my TC (512 flash, 256 RAM). So as a media centre, I'm not having much luck.

Sounds like for your setup, a TC would do the trick.

[dishe]

I have another TC a 5710 with a bit more processing power plus an expansion bay to take a PCI card. I'm thinking of adding an external harddrive and turning it into a PVR/DVR, but can't find a video card that run with the limited processing and memory in my TC (512 flash, 256 RAM). So as a media centre, I'm not having much luck.

Well, I'm not sure how well it would run, but you could try one of those video analog-to-USB adapters, like the Adaptec gamebridge, which I've used on old clunky laptops to use as video displays. It has the option to record in realtime mpeg, but it takes a toll on the system resources- I wouldn't trust a slow single core machine to handle that well while running an MJ.

Sounds like for your setup, a TC would do the trick.

Right- now my only question is which to get. Is it worth getting one of those ebay models that have already been setup for MJ (tons of those listed)? Or am I better off buying a generic TC and modifying it myself?
Also, which models are more likely going to be able to handle what I'm asking for?

Come to think of it, I wonder if I'd be better off getting an EEE pc with a broken screen...

[smalcom]

I'm running an HP TC5710 TC 800MHz, and I can't even use it to surf the web (too slow.) I think playing back video (even with a 1.2 GHz processor would be difficult.

The HP TC5700 series use Transmeta processors. These are not x86 processors. The are very long instruction word processors, and thus take many clock cycles to do what an x86 would do in one clock cycle.

Most of the sellers on ebay are selling HP TC5710 units, and I'm happy with mine, but the Wyse units are x86 processors.

Either way, the TC is the way to go if only because there is no heat generated by the TC. Your laptop (if it's like mine) gets very hot when it's running.

[cdwaldron]

Buy your TC based on price and components. You will probably be happier with a minimum of 512/512 but you can replace these components yourself. Any of the HP 5700 series should work. For the most part, the ebay offerings that are MJ ready are minor tweeks that are not really vital. I think you would have fun doing it yourself.

Would adding a bit of RAM to your laptop lengthen its service life as an MJ box? 128 mb is not enough to run XP reliably.

[StrobeWylan]

Currently, I'm running my MJ on an old Pentium III laptop with 128mb over wifi. The laptop does not run XP terribly smoothly, however MJ works fairly well all things considered (however I wonder how many of my little service "hiccups" are caused by an underpowered box like this).

Have you considered using nLite to size down your XP os?

[dishe]

Currently, I'm running my MJ on an old Pentium III laptop with 128mb over wifi. The laptop does not run XP terribly smoothly, however MJ works fairly well all things considered (however I wonder how many of my little service "hiccups" are caused by an underpowered box like this).

Have you considered using nLite to size down your XP os?

I've considered using nLite... I always got overwhelmed with options and gave up before actually completing a build of the OS.
Still, the thing seems to run hotter than it should all the time- the fan is always turning on and staying on for hours, and the performance monitor shows 100% cpu use alot. This laptop came out when the PIII was new, so my guess is that they didn't put all the fancy power-saving efficiency stuff in until later.

still, if Windows can run smoothly on it, it may be worth the slightly higher cost of running it if I can double it as a media center (which a TC won't do as well). Anyone have any advice/links for a n00bish nLite walkthrough?

[StrobeWylan]

There is some help here.

http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showforum=89

But haven't found a lot of useful stuff for what we need. I'm trying to do essentially the same thing you are. So far nLite seems to be the most likely route for me, though I haven't got it up and running yet.

[lockmaster]

I am using a HP t5700 with a 1Ghz processor, 1Gb flash and 512 mb ram. The tc is plugged ino a Trendnet wireless router with a 2.0 mbps internet download speed. It was a lot of fun upgrading the basic tc that I purchased on eBay for about $70. The tc upgrade instructions posted in this forum were excellent and I had no problems with the mods. My MJ works like a charm with the tc which sits in a corner on my desk. I have a 5 unit cordless phone plugged into the MJ. Although I use other computers for the internet, I have on occassion attached a usb keyboard, mouse and monitor to my t5700 for web surfing. The HP t5700 is much faster than my old Dell DX110 Celeron deskop but slow compared to my Pentium 5 laptop. The HP t5700 series of thin clients are not fast enough to watch movies on such web sites as Hula, Cinema Now... But they are adequate for MJ.