This device may use 11W, but then you need to hook-up this to a LCD display (35-50W). And of course you need to pay for the display, too, that brings the price at an higher point - correct me if i'm wrong.
At a 200/300$ price point you could just buy an used/refurb 2yo centrino laptop with a battery, a real hard disk, an optical drive, a powerful cpu, a 15" LCD included, and the power consuption would be probably lower, or almost the same, as this appliance + display.
(or at 500-600$ you could take a step forward and take a brand new laptop).
So i'm sorry, this Zonbu is simply pointless, in my humble opinion.
I don't really think that it's a good implementation, but I think it's a step in the right direction regarding power usage.
Sure, recycling is great, but there's only so much "second-hand" laptop stock available. New computers are being made all the time, so I think if companies are starting to be more focused on making machines that are "sufficient" for the needs rather than overkills, then it's all for the better.
re: LCD, a new 19" LCD would look a hell lot better than 2 yo 15" LCD on a cheap laptop that's probably starting to get pretty dim.
Well, anon. To be honest, i still use a more than 3yo acer centrino 1.3ghz (first series, the ones with 512kb L2 cache) with windows XP, it runs just fine, and i'm pretty sure it's better than a crippled via-epia diskless machine.
As for the LCD, you can hookup a 24" LCD display to it (not sure how much v-ram this zonbu has) and turn off the integrated panel, probably keeping a power consumption of about 20W, which is not 11w, but still near. But at least you can actually watch a dvd, and do a lot of other stuff that you can't do with that diskless zonbu (like working on your summer vacation video).
As for the software "sufficient" for your needs, as far as i understand, you can install the same software running on this zonbu on any pc. If it runs on a slow via, why can't it run on a more advanced cpu.
But again, i realize we probably have different point of view.
Let's not forget that the used laptop comes with some of it's hardware life used up and no warranty or data protection. Will the person you buy this used laptop from guarantee it for 3 years and backup your data every day and push upgrades on all it's software automatically and for free as they become available? Ultimately you get what you pay for.
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This device may use 11W, but then you need to hook-up this to a LCD display (35-50W). And of course you need to pay for the display, too, that brings the price at an higher point - correct me if i'm wrong.
At a 200/300$ price point you could just buy an used/refurb 2yo centrino laptop with a battery, a real hard disk, an optical drive, a powerful cpu, a 15" LCD included, and the power consuption would be probably lower, or almost the same, as this appliance + display.
(or at 500-600$ you could take a step forward and take a brand new laptop).
So i'm sorry, this Zonbu is simply pointless, in my humble opinion.
I don't really think that it's a good implementation, but I think it's a step in the right direction regarding power usage.
Sure, recycling is great, but there's only so much "second-hand" laptop stock available. New computers are being made all the time, so I think if companies are starting to be more focused on making machines that are "sufficient" for the needs rather than overkills, then it's all for the better.
re: LCD, a new 19" LCD would look a hell lot better than 2 yo 15" LCD on a cheap laptop that's probably starting to get pretty dim.
Well, anon. To be honest, i still use a more than 3yo acer centrino 1.3ghz (first series, the ones with 512kb L2 cache) with windows XP, it runs just fine, and i'm pretty sure it's better than a crippled via-epia diskless machine.
As for the LCD, you can hookup a 24" LCD display to it (not sure how much v-ram this zonbu has) and turn off the integrated panel, probably keeping a power consumption of about 20W, which is not 11w, but still near.
But at least you can actually watch a dvd, and do a lot of other stuff that you can't do with that diskless zonbu (like working on your summer vacation video).
As for the software "sufficient" for your needs, as far as i understand, you can install the same software running on this zonbu on any pc. If it runs on a slow via, why can't it run on a more advanced cpu.
But again, i realize we probably have different point of view.
Let's not forget that the used laptop comes with some of it's hardware life used up and no warranty or data protection.
Will the person you buy this used laptop from guarantee it for 3 years and backup your data every day and push upgrades on all it's software automatically and for free as they become available?
Ultimately you get what you pay for.