Slashdot Mirror
VIA Epia SP 13000 Review
Nehemiah writes "Epiacenter.com just published a review on the brand-new VIA Epia SP 13000 mini-itx mainboard.
It's the first VIA Epia board with the CN400 chipset and, together with the new epiOS Linux distribution that is announced in the review, it seems to have a very good performance during MPEG2/MPEG4 playback."
proscribe, 1: To denounce or condemn.
Here's a quick hint for you, don't use words you can't spell. Maybe you meant to say prescribe, to set down as a rule or guide; enjoin, to order the use of (a medicine or other treatment).
Now that I've gotten that over with: Mac minis are expensive and proprietary. The memory is not even a user-serviceable part, in terms of your warranty. (Look it up!) The ONLY good thing about it is the cool form factor. It has very limited expansion (even down to having only 1 1394 port) and is only $499 with the most limited hardware and no peripherals. If you want a machine for the looks, buy a mini. However, most of the software that most people want to run out there runs either on Linux, in which case there is no benefit to the Mini beyond the aesthetic, or on Windows, in which case the Mini can't help you.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Why oh why on these new small form factor devices do they insist on keeping legacy ports such as serial or the old PS2 style mouse and keyboard? Either make it small and get rid of them or put something useful such as firewire there instead.
Well, obviously, different folks will want to see different benchmarks, but how many people concerned with SPEC, Linpack, or Doom3 are even in the target market for this type of system? Seriously, the only useful benchmark is whatever you want to do with a system. Anything else is just bragging rights. Since a lot of people want to play media on these systems, media playback is a logical benchmark.
Thank you.
:).
The mirror concept is similar to (but different from) mirrordot. Hosted servers cost bucks (this isn't sitting on the end of a dsl line to my mom's basement
However, unlike merely copying somebody else's work and presenting as my own, I'm providing a service to reach sites that are responding slowly when slashdotted.
It's all still very experimental.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
Careful. The drive in the mini is not rated for continuous use. It's a notebook drive, so you should run it as little as possible. (It's rated for many sleep/wake cycles, but not continuous use).
Horseapples! Where are you getting this stuff? Notebook drives are tougher in every way than their desktop counterparts - they have to be. I suppose that some super-cheap notebook drives that aren't rated for continuous use may exist, but I'm not aware of any, and that certainly doesn't apply to the reputable brands. I've got several tiny little servers that have been running laptop drives for years with no problems. (One's an Epson "cash register" 486, another's a Toshiba Libretto 50J, and others are even stranger.)
And although hard disks aren't my specialty, I know more than a little about them, having been a program manager for both Latitude and Inspiron at Dell, and spinning up a company to build high performance storage-over-IP solutions based on high-end commodity RAID controllers a few years ago. The only real downside to Notebook disks is their relatively slow transfer speeds, since the disk mfrs for unfathomable reasons don't put serious controllers on the notbook mechanisms for a year or two. In many cases (especially if you're RAIDING them) this is more than made up for by their lower seek times - the heads don't have to move very far, and because they're smaller and less massive, they respond quicker.
I'm looking at building a custom small, low-power, super reliable RAID array for a client right now, and I'm actually looking even smaller - at the 1.8" mechanisms like the ones in a lot of the new MP3 players. The result will be *far* more reliable than any desktop drive could ever be - I could not possibly neet this customer's requirements with desktop drive hardware...
"The future's good and the present is nothing to sneeze at." - Roblimo's last
CLE266 does not do MPEG 2 decoding it does MPEG 2 acceleration.
I am about to begin work on a ubuntu derivative that has CLE266 support built in. Hang out on the unichrome list for more help on getting your working.
realkiwi
It might be one tiny fan but I assure you that if it sits below your TV if you use it as a media center you _will_ notice the noise it makes (unless you only see action movies of course ;-)
If the fanless obsession were really more widespread, it would put pressure on CPU makers to invent better heat dissipation mechanisms, and to generate less heat in the first place!
cpghost at Cordula's Web.