semi-green computing

[Matt Price]

hey all,

i'm re-rebuilding our long-out-of-commission media center here at home,
and thinking about what components to use.  As my kids get older and
start to need a computer, I'd really like to limit the number of boxes
we have draining power, so i'm kind of thinking i'd like to have just
one box that records, downloads and plays video, stores music, and ALSO
has a second seat/x-session on which my kids can surf the internet, type
up homework, and also play educational games (for the last one i'm
likely to need a windows virtual machine).  

Because it's doing double duty, i'd like this machine to have a fairly
powerful cpu; but because it'll be on a lot of the time, i'd like it to
have a half-decent power profile -- especially, i guess, really good
sleep states for all the processors, and a bios that supports timed
wake-up, so i can setup mythtv to shutdown if it doesn't have any
recording to do.  it's been a while since i bought any new hardware, and
i just wondered if anyone out there had any recent experience looking
for similar attributes.  also if you have any experience running
multiple x-sessions -- e.g. can i run one session on the video out of my
nvidia card, and a second one on the vga?  i'd love to hear about some
helpful stories.  Thanks as always!

matt


-- 
Matt Price
matt.price-H217xnMUJC0sA/PxXw9srA at public.gmane.org
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