Quoting Bill Strosberg <oclug [ at ] strosberg [ dot ] com>:
I bought a litte Zotac computer for around $225 for my 80 year old dad, and it does everything needed for the NAS application. It uses almost no power, has everything built in and doesn't confuse an 80 year old. I run Ubuntu on it for him and use an SSH tunnel to pipe through VNC for remote "help" so I can show him how to do things from across the province. It isn't going to make a Call of Duty fiend happy, but I could not think of a better box to build a NAS platform in. Bought it at Canada Computers on 10th line here in the far east. Been running for a year and a bit now without incident. Quiet and cool enough that he just leaves it running (and he would complain without hesitation). -- Bill
Just a thought, but when I was thinking about retiring an old IBM desktop file server, I considered the Western Digital MyBook Live. It runs a tweaked Debian/ARM set-up and, subject to certain caveats, new apps can be installed via apt-get install. It comes with a media server built-in. It runs quietly and is a lower power draw, going into idle states readily. It has gigabit ethernet, but is otherwise not easily expanded unless you are ready to pry the thing open and add your own connectors to USB headers. Hacker/mods sites are just a google away and you can start the OpenSSH server through the web interface, making it all pretty easy.
Future Shop is selling the 2T model for $170, 3T for $210, with an additional 15% off at checkout. The 4T, dual drive/RAID version is $400, but also has one USB 2.0 connector for adding an additional external drive.
http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.aspx?id=280 I haven't done this myself, so take this lead with a great big grain of salt. Michael ---------------------------------------------------------------- This message was sent using IMP, the Internet Messaging Program.