home audio system

[Lennart Sorensen]

On Thu, Dec 19, 2013 at 05:55:16PM -0500, William Park wrote:
> I'm sure you guys did your cost analysis... but, wouldn't it be cheaper
> with a low-end laptop or mini-PC box?
> 
> - I got bitten by ARM fad and bought BeagleBone Black.  My cost for the
>   board itself was $60.  Then, I was looking at microSD,
>   microHDMI-to-HDMI cable, HDMI-to-DVI cable (my monitor is DVI), 5V
>   regulated DC power block with 5.5mm/2.1mm barrel connector and with
>   good transient response (surprisingly difficult to find).  All these
>   add up to real money.

And what kind of low end PC or laptop would you consider?  Some people
like small and low power consumption which the PC option won't be.
Lots of people have USB chargers around already from various devices,
so the power supply is probably not an issue for most people.  All my
monitors have HDMI, so I would only need one cable, not two (and one
cable and a $4 adapter would do the job too).  microSD is not expensive
either, depending how big you insist it has to be.

Besides the cost to buy it up front isn't always what people care about.
Having something that is cheap to leave on all the time, not making much
heat or taking much space counts for something too.  They are also cuter.

> - Dealing with flaky Angstrom OS, Debian, and Ubuntu was another issue.

I have had no issues with Debian being flacky on armhf.

> - You learn how to install ARM Debian/Ubuntu, and learned how to
>   work-around their proprietary booting process and subsystems.  All
>   these knowledge/experience will become obsolete when they release next
>   version.  So, you end up doing their QA for free, well actually, you
>   pay for the privilege of doing their QA for them.

Installing on arm systems is certainly not as simple as a PC.

-- 
Len Sorensen
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