I just pieced together a dual-core atom 1.6 GHz system with 2 GB Ram, 160GB 2.5" drive and an ASUS case with external power supply. The PS unit will only draw 60 watts at max, and so at idle, would much less than this. It doesn't have an optical drive or wireless, but as an asterisk server and NAS box (with 7 USB ports, I can add as much temp space as necessary), it rocks and I have put Fedora 11 on it. All for $300 CDN.
I have a MSI wind and installed Mandriva 2009.0 and everything worked from the start. The hardware on the wind is almost the same as the eePC, and Mandriva was designed with netbooks in mind.
I think he means, you can grow your own food, and not have to pay for it, or someone can grow some food and give it to you to use as you will, with out having to pay for it. But if you take the food, and sell it for a profit, the person who gave you the food should get some of the cut for it.
I would recommend this. It has gps, wifi, bluetooth, runs linux, you can get qtextended for it, or just plain debian. It uses sim cards and will work with Rogers and Fido. The sdk is free, will run on windows, linux or mac. All royalty free. And will run any linux software.
You can get ide-usb converters, ones that do 40 pin 3.5" ide, 44 pin 2.5" ide to usb. They are not external cases, just a converter iwth a cable, and a power supply...very minimal but works great. Get enough for all the drives and connect them with a bunch of cheap usb hubs and plug them into a linux box. Make 1 large volume with LVM and viola!
Use a data encryption program to encrypt the data first, then use rar and password protect it. Burn it to a cd and have the post office (or bonded courier) deliver it, get a signature, and have them return the receipt. Then you can give the person on the other end the passwords in person.
If you use a wireless transmitter, like something from Tranzeo, and a yagi antennae, you can get up to 25 miles at high speed (1.5-3.5Mbps up to 54Mbps). This doesn't have to be set up on the house, you can put it on a 25' to 40' tower. Check out their website and see if they have a solution.
Get yourself a 1 to 4 gig usb key and load it up with software from portable apps. They have firefox, thunderbird, pidgin, etc. Everything is kept on the thumb-drive, you don't have to type passwords, it can contain your documents, etc.
To get a hand scanner to work with linux is relatively easy, if it is one that connect via serial or keyboard connector. Did it, done it. As for software, check out freshmeat.net. They have alot of POS software there, many for the kind of store you work in. If it isn't exactly what you are looking for, but close, contact the developer and see if you can work out an agreement to get the features that you want/need.
This would be my preference. Same as eePc, just with a slider keyboard. Buy a tough shell for it, one that will provide shock and water protection, and buy a bunch of the mini-sd cards. They come with an adapter to allow full sd capabilities, buy a sd-usb adapter (cheap) and do the USB OTG adapter cable and then copy the mini-sds to a thumbdrive that then you can mail or whatever.
Take the most powerful computer you have, add 1 agp video card, and the rest pci video. Using a usb hub, plug in the appropriate amount of usb mice and keyboards (you can use the ps/2 ones for the main box), and then just configure the heck out of it, and it will work.
And it spools it for me at home.
Asus dual opteron mb with nvidia chipset, dual-dual core opterons...watered cooled with nvidia sli video, sata drives and dual layer dvd-rw. Actually the water cooled is the dream, but otherwise this is what I work on. And the os is either ubuntu or CentOS.
If you go to www.linuxdevices.com and look around, there are several vendors who sell sbc's that have ethernet switches as backplanes, you can add as many as you want. The underlying cpu is either a strong arm, or x86 compat cpu, some have mini-pci slots, etc. And they all run linux!
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I just pieced together a dual-core atom 1.6 GHz system with 2 GB Ram, 160GB 2.5" drive and an ASUS case with external power supply. The PS unit will only draw 60 watts at max, and so at idle, would much less than this. It doesn't have an optical drive or wireless, but as an asterisk server and NAS box (with 7 USB ports, I can add as much temp space as necessary), it rocks and I have put Fedora 11 on it. All for $300 CDN.
I have a MSI wind and installed Mandriva 2009.0 and everything worked from the start. The hardware on the wind is almost the same as the eePC, and Mandriva was designed with netbooks in mind.
I think he means, you can grow your own food, and not have to pay for it, or someone can grow some food and give it to you to use as you will, with out having to pay for it. But if you take the food, and sell it for a profit, the person who gave you the food should get some of the cut for it.
I would recommend this. It has gps, wifi, bluetooth, runs linux, you can get qtextended for it, or just plain debian. It uses sim cards and will work with Rogers and Fido. The sdk is free, will run on windows, linux or mac. All royalty free. And will run any linux software.
You can get ide-usb converters, ones that do 40 pin 3.5" ide, 44 pin 2.5" ide to usb. They are not external cases, just a converter iwth a cable, and a power supply...very minimal but works great. Get enough for all the drives and connect them with a bunch of cheap usb hubs and plug them into a linux box. Make 1 large volume with LVM and viola!
Check out tranzeo or peplink, they do wonders. I have used tranzeo before, and it is one of the best, but peplink has some good equipment.
Use a data encryption program to encrypt the data first, then use rar and password protect it. Burn it to a cd and have the post office (or bonded courier) deliver it, get a signature, and have them return the receipt. Then you can give the person on the other end the passwords in person.
If you use a wireless transmitter, like something from Tranzeo, and a yagi antennae, you can get up to 25 miles at high speed (1.5-3.5Mbps up to 54Mbps). This doesn't have to be set up on the house, you can put it on a 25' to 40' tower. Check out their website and see if they have a solution.
If where you are going has hot-spots (and who doesn't now adays?), a Nokia 810 is perfect, I have one.
You could also use a thumb drive with DSL, or Slax and boot into it using Qemu for windows.
Get yourself a 1 to 4 gig usb key and load it up with software from portable apps. They have firefox, thunderbird, pidgin, etc. Everything is kept on the thumb-drive, you don't have to type passwords, it can contain your documents, etc.
To get a hand scanner to work with linux is relatively easy, if it is one that connect via serial or keyboard connector. Did it, done it. As for software, check out freshmeat.net. They have alot of POS software there, many for the kind of store you work in. If it isn't exactly what you are looking for, but close, contact the developer and see if you can work out an agreement to get the features that you want/need.
This would be my preference. Same as eePc, just with a slider keyboard. Buy a tough shell for it, one that will provide shock and water protection, and buy a bunch of the mini-sd cards. They come with an adapter to allow full sd capabilities, buy a sd-usb adapter (cheap) and do the USB OTG adapter cable and then copy the mini-sds to a thumbdrive that then you can mail or whatever.
Take the most powerful computer you have, add 1 agp video card, and the rest pci video. Using a usb hub, plug in the appropriate amount of usb mice and keyboards (you can use the ps/2 ones for the main box), and then just configure the heck out of it, and it will work.
And it spools it for me at home. Asus dual opteron mb with nvidia chipset, dual-dual core opterons...watered cooled with nvidia sli video, sata drives and dual layer dvd-rw. Actually the water cooled is the dream, but otherwise this is what I work on. And the os is either ubuntu or CentOS.
If you go to www.linuxdevices.com and look around, there are several vendors who sell sbc's that have ethernet switches as backplanes, you can add as many as you want. The underlying cpu is either a strong arm, or x86 compat cpu, some have mini-pci slots, etc. And they all run linux!