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World's Smallest Desktop Pentium4?

Valour writes "The Jem Report has just published an in-depth review and installation guide for the new Iwill ZPC, a cool little Pentium4 ultra small formfactor PC. There have been similar designs in the past, but nothing with this kind of power."

17 of 242 comments (clear)

  1. My experiences with Linux by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    I used to work as a consultant for a Fortune 500 company (more than 10,000 employees). As an expert in the field of IT consulting, I think I can shed a little light on the current climate of the open source community, and Linux in particular. The main reason that open source software, and Linux in particular, is failing is due to the underlying immaturity of the technology and the perception of the viral GNU license.

    I know that the above statements are strong, but I have hard facts to back it up with. At the Fortune 500 company that I worked for, we wanted to leverage the power of Linux and associated open source technologies to benefit our server pool. The perception that Linux is âoefreeâ was too much to ignore. I recommended to the company that we use the newest version of Linux, version 9.0. My expectations were high that it would outperform our current solution at the time, Windows2000, which was doing an absolutely superb job (and still is!) serving as web, DNS, and FTP servers.

    I felt that I was up to the job to convert the entire server pool to the Linux technology. I had several years experience programming VB, C#, ASP, and .NET Framework at the kernel level. I didnâ(TM)t use C, because contrary to popular belief, ASP and VB can go just as low level as C can, and the latest .NET VB compiler produces code that is more portable and faster than C. I took it upon myself to configure and compile all of the necessary shareware versions of software that we needed, including sendmail, apache, and BIND. I even used the latest version of gcc (3.1) to increase the execution time of the binaries. After a long chain of events, the results of the system were less than impressive..

    The first bombshell to hit my project was that my client found out from another consultant that the GNU community has close ties to former communist leaders. Furthermore, he found out that the âxâ(TM) in Linux was a tribute to the former Communist philosopher, Karl Marx, whose name also ends in âxâ(TM). The next bombshell to hit my project was the absolutely horrible performance. I knew from the beginning that Linux wasnâ(TM)t ready for the desktop, but I had always been told by my colleagues that it was better suited for a âoeserverâ. As soon as I replaced all of the Windows2000 servers with Linux servers, the Linux servers immediately went into swap. Furthermore, almost all of the machines were quad-processor x86 servers. We had no idea that Linux had such awful SMP support. After less than 1 day in service, I was constantly having to restart servers, because for some reason, many of the servers were experiencing kernel panics caused by mod_perl crashing apache! The hardship did not end there! Apparently, the version of BIND installed on the server pool was remotely exploitable. Soon after we found that out, a new worm was remotely infecting all of our servers! We were not expecting this, because our IIS servers running on Windows2000 had never experienced a worm attack. Microsoft has always provided us with patches in the unlikely event that an exploit was found. It took us hundreds of man-hours just to disinfect our Linux servers! After just 48 hours of operating Linux servers in our server pool, we had exhausted our budget for the entire year! It was costing us approximately 75% more to run Linux than Windows2000.

    Needless to say, I will not be recommending Linux to any of my Fortune 500 clients. In the beginning, we thought that since Linux was such âoeoldâ technology, it would be more mature than anything on the market. We also found out the hard way that rag-tag volunteer efforts responsible for Apache and BIND simply are not able to compete with the professional operations of Microsoft. I guess the old saying is true; âoeYou get what you pay for!â Needless to say, I will be using Microsoftâ(TM)s âoeshared licenseâ solution for my enterprise clients, rather than the communist GNU license.

    1. Re:My experiences with Linux by Kai_MH · · Score: 0, Offtopic

      Version 9.0 of what?

    2. Re:My experiences with Linux by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

      Version 9 of Linux you fool!

      All Lunixs were version 9 6 months ago - the latest version is 9.1.

      Call yourself a |9u>0rrrr?

  2. Re:Deflated specs! by Neophytus · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    Damn I've spent about ten optimised minutes thinking of a reply to this but it just isnt coming.

  3. WHO CAN DO FRACTIONS? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    Hey, there's 14 comments and already 2 of them refer to these people running their web server on the product in question.

    Har, har, har, fellas!

    So, 2/14... what's that? Like 50%?

  4. GAY SEX IS NOW LEGAL IN THE USA by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic
    HOMOS PWN J00!

    No, seriously, this is a good thing! Now police will stop arresting the slashdot editors for sodomy.

    1. Re:GAY SEX IS NOW LEGAL IN THE USA by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

      However, under 16 is still illegal, so don't expect to see Jon Katz or Pete Townshend anytime soon.

    2. Re:GAY SEX IS NOW LEGAL IN THE USA by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

      WTF are u talk1ng abuot d00d??/ Jon Katz rapez my anus evry nite!!!11 im wipnig hiz cum off my asshoel riote now!!11 btw i am 12!!11

  5. Another fine mess by HardcoreGamer · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    Microsoft OLE DB Provider for ODBC Drivers error '80004005'

    [Microsoft][ODBC Microsoft Access Driver] The Microsoft Jet database engine stopped the process because you and another user are attempting to change the same data at the same time.

    /include/left.inc, line 139

    Sorry. Didn't mean to change you at the same time. Maybe they should change the name from "Jet engine" to "Rubber-band engine" :)

    Why does this remind me of an Oliver and Hardy film where they both try to go through the door at the same time and just get stuck.

    "That's another fine mess you've gotten us into!"

  6. Heres the fucking Google Cache by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic
    You dirty slashdotting a-holes

    Just once I'd like to read one of these reviews before some shit crashes and burns.

  7. Slashdot anarchy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    Slashdot Anarchy.

    Will the madness never end!

    It would be at minimum polite, for the editors of this site to notify this site to notify web admins of their intensions before linking to other sites.

    Personal and small site operators just cant make financial plans that have anything to do with the traffic spikes /. delivers/

    The responsible thing would be for /. to sponsor the cache of the site for 24-48 hours. That kind of a responsible action might even sell some pop up adds to grateful site operators.

  8. Re:HEY ANAL SEX IS NOW LEGAL by Horny+Smurf · · Score: -1, Offtopic
    He's been a conscientious objector for years!

    Offtopic... 2-3 weeks ago, I went home with some slut (insert mom/sister/cowboy neal joke here). I asked her what she tought about gays. She said she was supportive of them. "That's good, because i want to have anal sex with you! Get ready for some fisting!". She suddenly decided it was disgusting.

  9. Re:JESUS, TACO, SLOW DOWN on the POSTING! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    Quality? ON SLASHDOT?

  10. CLICK HERE FOR PORN by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic
  11. A novel idea... by aechols · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    Microsoft OLE DB Provider for ODBC Drivers error '80004005'

    [Microsoft][ODBC Microsoft Access Driver] The Microsoft Jet database engine stopped the process because you and another user are attempting to change the same data at the same time.

    /include/left.inc, line 139


    Who'da thunk it, more than one user getting to the same data at the same time? Amazing how quickly computer technology changes.

    --
    Are you pondering what I'm pondering?
  12. Re:JESUS, TACO, SLOW DOWN on the POSTING! by scottcha+4 · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    Quality? You're new here aren't you?

    --
    Sanity is overrated...Being CRAZY is much more fun!!!
  13. Thank you Microsoft by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    Microsoft OLE DB Provider for ODBC Drivers error '80004005'

    [Microsoft][ODBC Microsoft Access Driver] The Microsoft Jet database engine stopped the process because you and another user are attempting to change the same data at the same time. /include/left.inc, line 139