semi-green computing

[Lennart Sorensen]

On Tue, Feb 17, 2009 at 05:43:26PM -0500, Matt Price wrote:
> 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!

I am not sure X officially supports running multi session.  The problem
is that all mice and keyboards are by default combined into a single
source of input.  You have to work against that system and split it up
and run X in raw mode for at least one of the keyboards.

For a power efficient CPU with lots of power, you could look at one of
the intel Core 2 Quad Q8xxx or Q9xxx chips.  The Q6xxx use quite a bit
more power so probably isn't the right choice, even though it costs a
bit less.  The Core i7 quads might actually be even better, althought
they are very recent and hence I haven't seen too much about them yet.

-- 
Len Sorensen
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