[FADCA] Quick switch solution?

[Keating Floyd]

I have really been impressed with my Asus EEE PC.  I have the 1GB
RAM/8GB solid-state drive version.

The advantage to that is low (ish...) power consumption, and pretty
good hardening against harsh environments - pretty much like you might
find where one might have a switch...

I think Chuck is right on here.  These machines are inexpensive
(geeks.com has netbooks as low as $149...
http://www.geeks.com/products.asp?cat=NBB) and certainly have enough
horses to drive network and serial comms!

Keating

On Mon, Jun 22, 2009 at 5:07 PM, Chuck Hast<wchast at gmail.com> wrote:
> Folks,
> I have not been on here much, mostly because I am never home...
> Indeed at this moment I am in Kalama, WA doing a job.
>
> I bought a Lenovo S10 netbook the other day, after playing with it a bit and
> figuring out what was hardware idiosyncrasies and OS idiosyncrasies, I pulled
> the HD out and stashed it away as I got tired of XP home real fast... I had a
> 500G HD which was looking for a home, I put it in the machine and loaded
> Ubuntu 9.04 on it. That was the best thing i could have done, gave this little
> netbook some real legs...
>
> I have been setting here thinking that these little slabs (you close the lid
> and that is what it looks like a small black slab) could be pressed
> into excellent
> switch service. I am going to see if I can set up a switch on this one and at
> least get back on the network when I am traveling.  Of course the serial ports
> will need to be USB ports, but I think that a lot of us probably now have USB
> serial ports in service so that should no longer be a issue, and indeed if you
> need multiple ports that is really the way to go.
>
> As I see it, the way prices have dropped on these little machines it should
> not be a real big deal to set up a nice switch and other facilities, given that
> the processor is a 1.6Ghz atom, and that is probably a lot more legs than
> most of our switches, and W2K access points are probably using on old power
> hungry machines. And all of them have been optomized to run Linux, indeed
> outside of the USA they are still selling large amounts of Linux Netbooks, the
> WinXP on a netbook has been mostly in the USA.
>
> When I put Ubuntu on this little box about the only thing I had a problem with
> was the microphone, all I had to do was go into the audio config file and add
> a line to correct it, I did not have to download any drivers, or other
> sillyness.
> It just worked. Oh and I am running Compiz with the 3D desktop on it, People
> walk up and watch me rotate it to get to another desktop, and that is when i
> hear "let me see you do that again!!". And that is followed with, how did you
> get that on windows?? from there you can probably guess the rest of it...
>
> Anyhow has been a lot of fun so far....
>
> --
> Chuck Hast  -- KP4DJT --
> To paraphrase my flight instructor;
> "the only dumb question is the one you DID NOT ask resulting in my going
> out and having to identify your bits and pieces in the midst of torn
> and twisted metal."
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