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Here's a $88 PC, it's an old model (still has a compact flash slot) but it is a small, self-contained IBM compatible PC that uses a handful watts.
http://www.norhtec.com/products/mcjrsx/index.html

A $120 one which is much better (has a FPU for a start), a lot more RAM.. 512MB, and is bundled in a keyboard like an 8bit or 16bit computer.
http://www.norhtec.com/products/surfboard/index.html
Looks fun! But doesn't look powerful enough to play youtube videos (it will run any x86 stuff too, as long as it's not i686)
Shipping cost is hell, though.

Here's a $88 PC, it's an old model (still has a compact flash slot) but it is a small, self-contained IBM compatible PC that uses a handful watts.
http://www.norhtec.com/products/mcjrsx/index.html

A $120 one which is much better (has a FPU for a start), a lot more RAM.. 512MB, and is bundled in a keyboard like an 8bit or 16bit computer.
http://www.norhtec.com/products/surfboard/index.html
Looks fun! But doesn't look powerful enough to play youtube videos (it will run any x86 stuff too, as long as it's not i686)
Shipping cost is hell, though.

http://www.norhtec.com/products/gecko/index.html

I want to get one of these, and put a 1.2W solar panel on the back of the screen, and some rechargeable AA batteries in it to provide a Netbook that practically never dies.

how do a laptop running on rechargeable AA's sound?

http://www.norhtec.com/products/gecko/index.html

the charger is right there in the computer.

iirc, they are also working on a computer in a keyboard. Basically a setup much like the C64 or amiga 500.

One thing that review did gloss over, but which is right there in TFA, among the first things listed.

"It can support Microsoft Windows XP."

So Linux is one of the options for this thing (they actually list a bunch of distros that work, apart from the one they specifically designed for the thing), not the only option.

Given the cries of how OLPC had sold out when they said they're going to support XP, I thought it would be kinda relevant...

People are looking in the wrong place. Move outside Intel and AMD.

$99 for a computer in a keyboard from Norhtec. (In fact, the prototype is still linked in my sig, but I have no connection to the company.) Video is available at Linux For Devices, but the Gecko Surfboard doesn't appear to be listed on tNorhtec's site yet.

This company seems to be pretty dedicated to making what you want.

http://www.norhtec.com/products/index.html

I'm impressed that they can supply low-power consumption home video and audio rigs that are completely fanless. They can support wireless connectivity, too, although personally I like nice fast private hard-wiring and have installed it throughout my home.

Dang shift key. Here.

"I'm looking forward to getting something like the Gecko Edubook [laptopshop.co.uk] which can run on cheap AA batteries instead of an expensive custom Li-Ion battery."

that is amazing, but it looks like their wonderful intro video was filmed in a hotel room which doesn't exactly give me much faith in the company or the product. Looks like a cheap chinese laptop, wonder if they're just a reseller because I don't think they're developing laptops in hotel rooms.

Regardless I really like the AA battery idea. I can always have a fresh set charging and replacing all 8 NiMH batteries is less than $20 vs $100+ for a regular laptop with the same battery life, and I'm sure in a pinch it'll run on regular AA batteries. Would be great for students, law enforcement, the military... practically anyone on the go.

Wonder if it reads the battery life properly? AA's don't have all the sophisticated battery monitoring hardware that is built into laptop batteries.

The Gecko EduBook uses AA batteries and the SoC uses 1.2 watts..

Norhtec has a bunch of computers with Linux. Sure, a lot of them are miniature and low power, but there's always the Panda (SFF).

This netbook and these development boards are based on the ARM architecture. You can also get ARM on a SODIMM form factor. And this little box looks nice.

I currently run WinXP at home, along with both Mac and PC laptops. I'm getting less and less happy with the performance & o/s of these machines, and besides I'd like to be able to casually access the net while my wife hogs the main desktop... for these reasons I'm looking into buying a solid state Linux box that I can use really just for net access.

There are plenty of options around now (all around $200, which is fine by me) - and I think this is going to become a big trend in the next few years. The concept of having a dirt-cheap, reliable, low power, always-on computer _in addition_ to the main household PC, being used (at first) only as a web client, is very exiting. My TV screen already has a VGA input - the idea is to have a backup PC running full-time so I can switch over to Linux and check my mail just as easily as looking something up on teletext.

I've been contemplating making the switch to Linux for a year or so, but this way I don't have to switch. I can keep the Windows box around and migrate slowly - the low cost of the hardware and environmental advantage of having a 1-watt processor make it an easy decision. Good times.

BTW - The Microclient Sr looks like the machine of choice.

You could also compare it with the NorhTec MicroClient which also uses a 500MHz AMD Geode LX800 CPU and which, they claim, only consumes 0.9 watts of power. The options you choose would probably affect its power consumption. It runs on 12-Volts which might make it suitable for a solar project that has 12-volt deep cycle batteries.

For ranchers or other people who live in remote locations far from any power lines, it might be useful. Some of those people rely on solar panels, backup generators and deep cycle batteries for their power. They do not have power to waste.

If either the peak-oil pessimists or the global warming people turn out to be correct, then such extreme energy efficiency might possibly become necessary somewhere within my lifetime. Perhaps neither scenario will ever really happen.

My 20-inch LCD flatscreen monitor (not a wide sceen) uses about 38-Watts while I am at the computer and then only uses 1-Watt when it goes blank in the sleep mode. It spends the majority of the day with the screen blank and only using 1-Watt. I do not personally know much about either company or their computers.

NorhTec MicroClient - New Version

The computer that I built myself about 1 1/2 years ago, is almost fanless too, but it does have a small water pump which is a moving part. It has a Zalman fanless water cooling system for the CPU and for the Northbridge chip. It doesn't use water cooling for the video card, because I was able to find a fanless video card which gets by with using heat sinks instead. It also has a fanless Antec power supply, although I probably could have got by with using their less expensive model which is a high efficiency power supply with an almost silent fan. I have a case fan, but can use a knob on the front of my computer to adjust its speed and noise level to something acceptable. It is a very quiet computer.

Zalman Reserator 1 V2 is a fanless water cooling system

I am not a technician or an expert, but I suppose it would be possible to build a computer without a hard drive. I do know of a company which offers the option of plugging a 40-Pin Solid-State Drive into the IDE connector on almost any appropriate computer's motherboard to create a WiFi hotspot controller. Not having tried that myself, I am not specifically recommending that to anyone. I am not sure if it allows for lots of constant rewriting like a hard drive or not?

• Solid state drives
• 40-Pin Solid-State Drive

Here is an example of a computer which, if I am not mistaken, can run Windows XP or Linux from a 1, 2, or 4 GB compact flash (CF) drive. They also offer the option of using a hard disk. I don't know anything about their products and it is not a real powerful computer. I am just using it as an example. I am also not sure how well this compares to hard drives for constant rewriting and heavy usage. As I said, I am not a technician or an expert and don't know much about any of these alternative devices.

Norhtec MicroClient

The OLPC missed their chance to get money from me. About one year ago I was offering to pay up front for one priced at three times the cost, to be delivered when they were finally made. Now I wouldn't buy one from a starving ethiopian, not even for $50, not even if it would feed his entire village for a year.

The reason is that other similar stuff has come out and is on the market. I now own a flash-disk-based, no-moving-parts, 200 MHz computer, and it only cost me $150.00 (it is even cheaper now). I am thinking of buying a similar 800 MHz computer, that will also have the ability to use a laptop harddrive (moving parts though!), to use as a low power consumption web server and printer server; that would be under $200. I may find an excuse for purchasing a similar Atmel-based system for only $70 (the fact that the Atmel based system is not x86 based is kind of a turn off though).

All of these systems are powered by DC. That means that if I wanted to bolt it all into a shiny aluminum breifcase, add some of those gel-cell lead-acid batteries for RC racers or a bank of NiMh cells, and make a laptop if I wanted. I could take apart one of those crank-based LED flashlights they now sell so cheaply and add that, and be famous for a day on hackaday.com.

I could do that all without having to wade through a bunch of self-righteous self-promoting by MIT Media Lab (a well spring of self promotion, if you are not familar with them) salesmen. So why buy an OLPC now ? For that matter, if you were the government of, oh, say THAILAND, which is where the Norhtec company I purchased my flash-based computer is located, why wouldn't you just buy the cheaper locally made product ? While the OLPC does integrate a lot, it's not as if rural people aren't familar, or can't find someone who is familar, with the concept of a car battery, old truck generator, and a bicycle. The OLPC has some integrated software, but even a third world mired in poverty country has one national university with a handful of students who know what linux and the internet are, you can hand out a MINISCULE amount of money to them to get a setup everyone can use to run these small computers on. It will just be Puppy Linux or Slax with the local language settings already done.

The OLPC is a concept whose time has come, and gone, and it's promoters should do what the Media Lab has always done -- claim victory and insist it was all just a "proof of concept" and charge on to the next big hype with which to milk their sponsors.

The thin clients cost the same as the PC but do a lot less
If you stick with Windows RDP terminals, they can, particularly the Wyse Winterms. Now there are Linux terminals (that can be configured via LTSP to be RDP clients) as low as $90 in volume and $149. (The NTA 6020P is $149, although they have removed the line-item pricing for some reason).

So things are looking good for these units. The City of Largo has an administrator that keeps a blog that is interesting reading on how they are stepping up from basic terminals to using advanced terminals to add 3D eye candy, presumably driven by the cost savings over the past 5-10 years. I particularly like this posting that shows some daytime loads on the different servers.

Or my interest in it, anyway. Once upon a time, PCs were huge, but had lots of wasted space. You could put them into a smaller box, or make them really tiny once motherboards were all integrated and you could do the whole thing without PCI cards sticking out. I used several SFF Compaq Deskpros over the years and they've all been great--fast, small, cheap, and bulletproof. Then along come tiny ATX boards and neat machines can be made even smaller.

Then along comes the Mac Mini and in the last two years I've seen lots of "We took a Mac Mini and stuck it in something bigger" and I'm like, what's the point? I've got two Minis and they're great. (Though I'll buy a Mac Pro next time they're revved because I need a little more juice (mine are G4s) and a lot more disk than these little guys can hold.) I also plan to play around with a PC mini clone I saw somewhere, or maybe one of these little guys that Cringley recently had some fun with.

See the $120 (1 off) tiny PC at http://www.norhtec.com/products/mcjr/index.html and make the CPU a VIA Eden 1.2GHz, the GPU/subsystem a VIA CX700M with MPEG2/4 hardware decode, USB2... and you have a desktop replacement that is fanless because it draws under 20W total with HDD.

It's called Microclient Sr., and announced at CES this week.

If you want onboard DVD/CD player/burner, there are other versions that are bigger to accommodate a slimline DVD.

I have a Microclient Jr., and it is acceptable with XP and zippy with Win98 - not bad for 200MHz and 8W!

Give it a couple of years, and desktop cases will be just for the gamers and people needing a lot of cards of storage.

I don't believe that the device in the article is actually powering the computer by itself. But, assuming for the moment that is was, then what kind of computer could an overweight middle aged guy like me peddle power for an hour or more? Laptop computers usually tend to be more energy efficient than most desktop computers. I should not plan on trying to peddle power a Pentium 4 with a top-of-the-line power hungry video card and an inefficent power supply hooked to a multiple 19 inch CRT monitors. Yes, can't you just see me trying to do that for hours at a time?

My AMD Athlon 64 desktop computer uses a quiet fanless cheap video card. The power supply is 85% efficient which is unusually good. It is plugged into a watt meter which shows that most of the time it uses about 95 Watts (not including the monitor) but it briefly uses much more under heavy load. That does not include the monitor. Some LED monitors only use about 50 Watts or so but the CRT monitors use about twice as much power. The energy efficient Athlon 64 EE Processor uses much less power than the processor which that I have. If I am not mistaken, I belive Intel's new "Core 2 Duo" processer is fairly efficient, but I don't know the exact number.

Perhaps an overweight middle age person like me could handle something like the NorhTec Panda PC which only draws about 21 Watts. That plus the LCD montor which would probably draw an additional 50 Watts or so. Maybe I could use a KVM switch to easily switch my monitor, keyboard and mouse back and forth between something like that being run by peddle power and my other computer being run from the local power compay. That is of course assuming that the peddling device was actually hooked to an alternator or generator plus an inverter and was actually powering the computer.

Another possibility might be to install a KVM switch on each computer so that the government employee could switch back and forth between a computer that is connected to the Internet and one that isn't. At one time I had a KVM switch between my new computer and my old computer. The KVM switch allowed me to switch back and forth between the two computers in about two seconds. A KVM (keyboad-video-mouse) switch allows the use of one keyboard, video and mouse to control more than one computer. One of the computers would only be connected to the Internet and the other would be on the internal network (not to the Internet).

If space for the second computer is a problem, there are now computers as small as a book that could be used to connect to the Internet. For browsing the web they could use something small possibly similar to the WinBook Jiv Mini, The Panda PC, MicroServer HP, AOpen MiniPC Duo MPO945-V, or the Apple Mac Mini Core Duo. To keep costs down, perhaps they would not need to upgrade the mini-PC that is connected to the Internet as often as their other computer. Conceivably they could use Ubuntu Linux or Mac OSX on the mini-PC that is connected to the Internet which would be an advantage because virus, worms and spyware are almost unheard of on Linux or Mac computers. They could still use Windows on their main internal network where their computers would live a more sheltered existance. The extra PC wouldn't need to use much extra electricity because some of the mini-PCs only use about 21 Watts.

I am not a computer professional (or expert), but it seems to me that isolating the internal nework from the outside world with a KVM swith might possibly be an alternative to consider. That would be especially true if they are using malware infected Windows computers, are understaffed with properly trained and motivated IT people, and have failed to secure their network by other methods. I have actually thought about doing something like that at home with one or both computers running Linux.

Another possibility might be to install a KVM switch on each computer so that the government employee could switch back and forth between a computer that is connected to the Internet and one that isn't. At one time I had a KVM switch between my new computer and my old computer. The KVM switch allowed me to switch back and forth between the two computers in about two seconds. A KVM (keyboad-video-mouse) switch allows the use of one keyboard, video and mouse to control more than one computer. One of the computers would only be connected to the Internet and the other would be on the internal network (not to the Internet).

If space for the second computer is a problem, there are now computers as small as a book that could be used to connect to the Internet. For browsing the web they could use something small possibly similar to the WinBook Jiv Mini, The Panda PC, MicroServer HP, AOpen MiniPC Duo MPO945-V, or the Apple Mac Mini Core Duo. To keep costs down, perhaps they would not need to upgrade the mini-PC that is connected to the Internet as often as their other computer. Conceivably they could use Ubuntu Linux or Mac OSX on the mini-PC that is connected to the Internet which would be an advantage because virus, worms and spyware are almost unheard of on Linux or Mac computers. They could still use Windows on their main internal network where their computers would live a more sheltered existance. The extra PC wouldn't need to use much extra electricity because some of the mini-PCs only use about 21 Watts.

I am not a computer professional (or expert), but it seems to me that isolating the internal nework from the outside world with a KVM swith might possibly be an alternative to consider. That would be especially true if they are using malware infected Windows computers, are understaffed with properly trained and motivated IT people, and have failed to secure their network by other methods. I have actually thought about doing something like that at home with one or both computers running Linux.

I like this one better:

http://www.norhtec.com/products/mcjr/index.html

I'm not interested in no mini-itx box unless it's wedged into an adorable, panda-like case. http://www.norhtec.com/products/panda/index.html

You might consider one of these

From the site:
SIS 55x processor (x86 compatible)
3 USB ports
2 Serial (RS-232) / 1 Parallel port
Built in AC97 audio - Audio in/out
2 VGA out ports
ATA-33/66/100 support
1 or 2 RJ45 for 10/100 MBit Lan
PS/2 Keyboard/Mouse connector

Single 5 Volts DC @ 1.8 A support

128 MB RAM
20 GB 2.5" hard disk

1 NTSC or PAL video in (frame grabber)
1 NTSC or PAL TV out
Support for two VGA displays

I've been looking at doing a project like this for a while now, so I'd be interested to see how you go about some things.

Some really nifty quiet machines at nOrhTec. Their MicroServers are smaller than any cable modems I've seen.

Lots of small (but bigger than the MicroServer), low power machines at Mini-ITX

Try norhtec computers, like the silent server and so on - you mentioned you wanted noiseless computers. These computers have no fans in them, and are completely silent except for a spinning HDD.

On the details page it mentions that it can run on 12 volt DC -- this would make it perfect for running it a car! Now to just figure out some sort of display. Great idea for GPS navigation...

Check out one of the other products they offer. 667 MHz, 20GB HDD, USB 2.0, and on board video. Not as cost effective as a desktop box, but if space is a premium then this is a good answer.

You should check out Norhtec's stuff. I haven't tried them (yet), but for what you're talking about you might be interested in their S3 based MicroServer, less features but less juice and smaller than Mini-ITX systems (which they also have).