I was telling Narelle about [[Linutop

http://www.linutop.com/linutop2/index.en.html]] computers and how they were pretty cool, but too expensive for they are when you can get a big computer for 350EUR, and that Linutop’s pretty much force you to have a server of some kind anyway. She came up with an interesting idea: with an external USB disc, you actually have a full computer.

I’ll track my research on the topic of ‘superlight, super-silent’ computers here.

Linutop 1 considered too small (256Mb not really enough for Firefox (what about FF3?)) Linutop 2: 333EUR incl VAT

IDE-USB enclosure: [[20USD	http://www.xpcgear.com/usbenclosure.html]] or [[14EUR	http://www.amazon.fr/APM-Boitier-Alu-Externe-pour/dp/B000TJ4TC2/ref=sr_1_12?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1208859337&sr=8-12]] or a better one at [[20EUR	http://www.amazon.fr/EW-Link-SATA-External-Hard-Enclosure/dp/B0010VGQJM/ref=sr_1_11?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1208859337&sr=8-11]]
Disc: 500GB for [[100EUR	http://www.amazon.fr/Disque-dur-interne-3-5-Hitachi-DeskStar/dp/B0013YL5WY/ref=pd_sxp_grid_pt_0_2]]

Or: 500GB USB disc: [[100EUR|http://www.amazon.fr/Iomega-Disque-externe-500Go-USB2/dp/B000SKLNRG/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1208859247&sr=8-1]] or [[93EUR|http://www.amazon.fr/Western-Digital-WD5000KS-interne-SATA-300/dp/B000JFGI16/ref=pd_sxp_grid_pt_1_2]]

An alternative to the USB enclosure would be to actually get a dedicated disc server such as [[this Quad-disc NAS

http://www.amazon.fr/Lindy-Bo%C3%AEtier-Quad-HDD-noir/dp/B0012GHXCY/ref=pd_sbs_ce?ie=UTF8&qid=1215509132&sr=8-1]]. What’s interesting here is the ability to scale: get one NAS with 500GB then several Linutops working off the same storage.

EDIT 13SEP2008: An alternative would be a [[FitPC

http://www.fit-pc.com/new/]] which has an internal disc for a similar price range.