[GTALUG] Mini PC for Home Office?

[phiscock at ee.ryerson.ca]

Here's the outcome of that project:

I purchased the Asus VIVOPC-VM40B-02 and a 22 inch Samsung LCD screen at
Canada Computers, total $557 (including HST). The computer comes with a
keyboard and mouse. (Thanks to Herb Richter for that suggestion.)

I was impressed by the packaging and build quality of the computer. I was
not impressed by Windows 8.1, which is a real dog's breakfast of Selling
Stuff and Requesting All Your Information, and a really badly designed UI.

So I downloaded the latest version of Linux Mint and installed that as a
dual-boot system. For those that haven't done this - first you use the
partition tool in Win8.1 to reduce the size of the windows partition,
freeing up space. Then, in the Linux install, you divide up that partition
and assign it. Fortunately I had gone through this process in a previous
install and I had good notes. I can't imagine the average user doing this.
Thank heaven for Google.

At the end of the installation we have a dual-boot selection menu that
comes up on power-on, and we can select either operating system. Both
operating systems detected and connected to the wireless network without
any fuss, which is convenient.

In the previous install process, on an Asus laptop, the grub boot menu is
somehow accessible only from inside Windows and there is a lengthy
song-and-dance needed to get to it. So this one is much more convenient.

Thanks to everyone who had suggestions for this project.

Peter







> On 2015-03-01 05:34 PM, Evan Leibovitch wrote:
>> Now that the Raspberry Pi 2 is even capable of running Windows
>
> Note that that's the text-only Windows 10 IoT edition. Text-only Windows
> would be … VMS, I guess.
>
>> (and promises to run Linux. XBMC etc even faster), I wonder if it
>> might be enough for your needs.
>
> The original Raspberry Pi was laughable as a desktop, but I just set up
> a Raspberry Pi 2* yesterday, and it's not half bad. Browsing is pretty
> snappy, and LibreOffice — though by no means fast — was usable. It
> doesn't feel like a small machine. I'm definitely considering recycling
> my old ThinkPad R51 (1.4 GHz Pentium-M, 1.5 GB RAM), as the Raspberry Pi
> 2 seems faster than it ever could be. No x86 compatibility, though, but
> I don't really need it.
>
> cheers,
>  Stewart
>
> *: Canada Robotix up on Denison had them. They'll be sold out by now.
>
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-- 
Peter Hiscocks
Syscomp Electronic Design Limited, Toronto
http://www.syscompdesign.com
USB Oscilloscope and Waveform Generator
647-839-0325