fit-PC2 XP HD 1.6 GHz Intel Atom Review
November 2nd, 2009
fit-PC2 XP HD 1.6 GHz Intel Atom Review from Towhee. Works Poorly With Linux, But Read On.., Recently I decided to buy a second computer to use for web and multimedia (99 percent of what I do) and to leave the gaming machine off when not in use. The main reason for this was to reduce the my energy consumption while performing these low power tasks – the gaming machine was overkill. I combined the Fit-PC2, Thinkvision L1940P, and Windows XP. My energy consumption dropped from 240 watts to 30 with this combination. The Fit-PC2 is about one fifth the size of a laptop – tiny. I purchased the Fit-PC2 pre-loaded with Ubuntu 8.04. It ran well out of the box but certain applications were quite sluggish – Firefox web browser, and particularly multitasking. I upgraded to to Unbuntu 9 to see if the sluggish operation issues would clear up. Unbuntu 9 was much worse than Unbuntu 8.04 and in my opinion unusable. Over the next 3 days, I installed every version of Linux there was to see if I could get this machine working at an acceptable speed. Only 2 were fast on this machine: Slax Linux and Puppy linux. Both operated very fast with this machine and had the tools that I wanted to use for multimedia and web surfing, but some of their applications are out of date, particularly the web browsers would not support flash or other add-on type programs for web surfing. As a last resort, I pulled Windows XP Professional off of the shelf and installed it on my Fit-PC2 machine. I was certain that this machine would not have the power to handle a Windows install. To my surprise, when I booted up Windows XP this machine performed faster than even the tiny Linux installs. Windows XP Pro installed without a hitch on this machine, and it continues to perform almost as good as my 3000 dollar gaming machine for web and multimedia applications. By the way, I am able to play full screen videos off the web, off CD, off Netflix using this machine without skipped frames or slowdown. My current setup uses only 30 watts of power which is less than a third of what a 100 watt light bulb consumes. The Fit-PC2 itself uses about 10-12 watts of power as measured at the plug outlet by a Kill-O-Watt meter. I highly recommend this machine to anyone interested in reducing their energy consumption or reducing their carbon footprint.
To check price or purchase fit-PC2 XP HD 1.6 GHz Intel Atom.
Related posts with fit-PC2 XP HD 1.6 GHz Intel Atom Review
Posted in Desktop PC | 
Tags: Acceptable Speed, Atom, Energy Consumption, Firefox Web Browser, Gaming Machine, Ghz Intel, Hd, Intel, Last Resort, Multimedia Applications, Netflix, One Fifth, Puppy Linux, Second Computer, Slo, Tiny Linux, Unbuntu, Watts, Web Surfing, Windows Xp, Windows Xp Pro
