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On 4 Sep 2003 18:19:13 -0700,
Conor Crowley wrote:
I've been going back and forth a lot on this issue myself. For $1000 I
can either get an okay laptop, or three (3) desktops of the same
caliber. Since I also plan to mount a widescreen LCD on an arm that
will reach my companioway, that will add ~$700 to the cost of either
laptop or desktop. But with desktops, I could have two backup/guest
systems for the same price.
Since I'm not all that concerned about weight or space, I think at
this stage my primary concern is power consumption. I'm told by those
who sell "marine" laptops that laptops in general use a lot less
power, yet I read in computer trade rags that modern desktops are just
as energy efficient. I would be willing to bet they're pretty close -
especially if you configure the same sleep mode type options (start
shutting down parts of the system that aren't being used). But..... I
really don't know.
So, my question is: does anyone have any hard data on this subject or
perhaps some links? Also looking for information on how I might go
about measuring actual power consumtpion myself.
If you are careful in what you put in the desktop machine (no mondo
gamer video card, no row of RAID drives etc) then the difference between
a laptop wLCD screen, and a desktop w/LCD screen, is marginal in real
terms. My Laptop comes with a powersupply rated for ~70W, it draws far
less than that of course. The Shuttle mini PC we have, has a 240 (IIRC)
again, it draws nothing like that normally. The laptop is a PIII/1GHz,
the desktop, a PIV/2GHz. Both machines put out more heat than I would
prefer. I've gone over this before myself, wondering which makes sense
to buy. and came to the conclusion that it could go either way
Laptops take less space, and mostly, less power, but are far more
expensive and less rugged, plus, they can't be repaired easily, or
cheaply. At least in the states, I can buy just about anything I need to
repair the desktop machines, in any reasonably sized town. Not so the
laptops.
Laptops tend to pack away much smaller, the screen being attached really
helps there. Oh, most laptops have a higher res screen than you can
reasonably get with a desktop LCD. My Dell laptop has a 1600x1200, which
frankly, for a 15" format screen, is actually a bit too large. But
I manage
I am looking into a cerfcube for general use, nice little low power ARM7
system, draws maybe 200ma of +12VDC, but then, I don't use Microsoft
Windows, so am not stuck on the x86 platform.
Another thing I am looking into, are some of the rackmount cases that
use passive heat dissapation, big heatsinks and heatpipes for the CPUs,
use lower power "Mobile" cpus (more $$ than the standard of course, but
not too bad) and no fans, no fan noise, no moving parts. That and some
solid state storage, Compact flash drives of 256MB or so (do you
*really* need a 120GB drive for general use on the boat? ) A big
advantage of passive cooling like that, is the ability to seal the case,
so no moisture/dust can get in. Set up any big drives in a different
enclosure, with Firewire, and turn them off when not needed. That's what
we do with the CD/DVD burner, and the printer, don't use them? turn them
off.
As for measuring the power draw, a simple ammeter and a modified power
cable will usually suffice, but with the laptop, be sure to get the
current draw with batteries being charged, and without. Oh, that's
another advantage of laptops (and one of their weaknesses) the batteries
give you a built in UPS.
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--
Jim Richardson
http://www.eskimo.com/~warlock
Linux, because eventually, you grow up enough to be trusted with a fork()