Well, here I go. Aspire one as a desktop replacement

I must be a gluten for punishment or something. My wife finally got her netbook from Comcast. It's a Dell Mini 10v. Not a bad unit. Since she got that and I have my Aspire one I've been thinking about shutting down my main system which is a full tower. I going to be using the monitor from the tower for my netbook. I've ordered a stand for a 17" monitor for my wife's netbook. I've also ordered an external dvd burner and a 2 bay external drive enclosure for use on my netbook. The drive enclosure will hold (hopefully) 2TB of hard drives taken out of the tower. Those 2 items should be here sometime today via ups.

Around Christmas I had put windows XP home back on the Aspire one. That will be going back to windows 7. My wife's netbook will also be going to windows 7.

I have a belkin wireless router which we use for the netbooks. Since the router also has 4 wired ports, the tower has been plugged to it. That will be changing today.

The main printer is a Lexmark z2420 which is also wireless. Needs cartridges but it works. I do need to get a couple wireless keyboards and mice. No bigger though.

Why am I doing this?

For the past few months our electric bill has been $350 to $500. The tower has a 650watt power supply and the system is usually under a constant load due to files transfers. I figure that running both the netbooks would save on electrical use (a little bit). Anything we can do to cut down on electricity use but still keep doing what we do every day is a good thing, isn't it?

Do you think I'm going down the right track or is there something else I need to think about?

 

A little update before I shut down the desktop.

Got a Masscool uhb-370us2 dual bay sata external drive enclosure. Looks to be extremely well built.

Also got a samsung se-s084 slim external dvd writer. Haven't opened the box yet as I'm trying to get desk cleared and cleaned beforehand.

I sure hope this is going to be worth it.

 

It has been done. I am now on the aspire one. Bought a usb keyboard and a 4 port usb hub today.

So far this system consists of:

Acer aspire one 8.9" screen
1gig ram
160gig hard drive
Windows 7 Professional
external dvd writer
external 2 bay enclosure with 1.5TB of hard drives in it
22" Princeton LCD monitor @ 1280x1024. Can go to 1680x1050 if I really wanted to. The screen on netbook is turned off.
4 port usb hub
lexmark z2420 wireless printer
belkin wireless router (need to upgrade to N, right now is G)

Doing this makes me want to invest in the revo or something. I'll be looking into that the next few months. If feels just as speedy as the 2.8gig desktop I was running. Getting ready to install my wife's and I favorite game, bejeweled twist.

 

I guess a 650W power supply running all the time would be like a microwave oven on all day - didn't realize they made them like that. But why are you disconnecting the big PC from the router?

There are some applications I wouldn't run on the netbook, e.g. Photoshop, and certainly streaming video and suchlike run better on my big PC than on the netty - so it depends what you're doing. Since you've already got the big beast why not keep it connected for big computing? With a USB hub you just plug all the peripherals at once and fire it up when you want it.

 

This is mainly just an experiment. I do use photoshop cs4 on the netbooks without any problems and under windows 7. I haven't had any problem with running anything, but do have some connection drops through the belkin router (it sucks).

Why am I disconnectin the big one from the router? Mainly to see if the electrical bill does in fact drop and how much it does. I can burn them and watch them with the dvd player without to much hassle. Took me about 5 minutes to convert and burn an avi to dvd last night, using the aspire one.

So far I have been able to do everything I have been able to do with the big system, except stream movie to the tv, and the acer hasn't even hiccuped.

I may, at a later date, but the big systems mobo in a smaller case, since it's a baby atx. Doesn't need much to run it just I went overboard with an overclock one time with it (water cooled and ran at 4ghz). Once I am able to downsize it a little I may go back to it. I kinda like the setup like it is right now though. New keyboard is taking a bit to get use to (logitech k300).

 

A little update...

It's a learning curve to get used to the setup. The new keyboard seems kind of weird, but manageable. I have to keep reminding myself that I'm not on a full fledged desktop any more and the dvd burner in on the desk, not in the tower. I have had a few hiccups with wifi but I think that's the router getting overloaded with transfers. The external 2 bay drive enclosure is hummin along, but every now and then I hear one of the disk click. I might have a bad disk in there, not sure. Sure hope it's not the big one if there is a bad one.

I bought a 4port usb 2.0 hub, which is working great. Right now it's only got the mouse and printer plugged into it, but no problems there. I do have to leave the netbook open or the system goes into swtandby mode. No problem with that though. I had to put a piece of paper over the camera as I found out it was working all the time and streaming everything that was going on in the house. Not a good thing there.

All in all I have been able ot do everything I did on the desktop. Yea, it's a little slower, but it really isn't as bad as I thought it'd be.

I am (ugh!) looking at an Emachines SFF system for $298. It's a complete desktop, right around the same specs as the Acer. Looks pretty nice, but I bet it has a bigger power supply in it also. Something I don't want right now, at least until I get the next electric bill.

 

You should be able to prevent standby from the lid - in XP Control Panel, Power Options, Advanced change the lid setting to "do nothing" - I use my big Dell laptop with desktop peripherals much as you do and that works on it when I don't want an extended desktop - I actually prefer two screens with Photoshop since I need to have Help window open.

You can also disable that camera in the Device Manager, if you don't use it, since it drains resources that can be put to better use on the weak machine.

 

There are other low power options besides moving to an 8.9" Aspire with a dinky keyboard. Admittedly some would require an initial investment.

For example, the Aspire Revo nettop in the Atom 330 version.

Or a HTPC setup based on the D510 Atom board. Or a low powered server for file transfers.

Or a sub 400, 15.6-17" cheapie (but well spec'd) laptop, Frys had a Compaq recently with a decent dual core Athlon plus 4200 graphics.

I'd also do an energy audit. We live in a 1000 sq ft unit and pre-electric washing machine/dryer had a $15 per month electric bill. Adding the two machines and doing laundry daily boosted that to $30-$40 per month. But adding a 1500 watt space heater this winter shot the bill up to $100 per month.

While electric rates may vary where you live, it's hard to understand a $350 bill off a 650 watt appliance (in this case your computer).

I just don't see anybody being happy with the keyboard and graphics performance of any current netbook as their main computer. I still can't get decent Hulu (and by decent I mean full screen, 480p) with a netbook even with a Broadcom card in it.

 

Well, it's been a while now, figured I'd give another update.

I've done some dvd authoring and game playing without any problems. I'm also burning audio DVDs left and right, trying to get my music collection back to where it used to be (old school electronic bass music).

NorCalAspire: I'm not using the keyboard or monitor on the aspire. I have a Princeton Graphics 20" widescreen LCD monitor and an external keyboard/mouse. Haven't got the new electric bill yet and will see if there is a difference when I do get it, around the 7th I think. IF there is no difference I'll be going back to the tower.

Forone: I don't run XP. I'm on windows 7 professional. I do think there is a way to do that with this os also, just haven't looked. I did turn off the camera though. Thanks for the info.

My main hiccup right now is overloading the wireless connection. Torrents are darn near impossible behind this crappy router I have (Belkin sucks). I'd probably be better off wired for that, but haven't tried that yet. I know I will never buy another Belkin product again, that's for sure.

Our electric bill has always been high here for some reason. JEA says the are the lowest priced in the state, but yet, everybody is complaining about the higher bills. Especially right now with having to run heaters. The first 2 weeks we were in this house the bill was over $200 and all that was ran at that time was a window AC unit (220v). We don't use that anymore. To give you an idea of what our bill is like, here is an overview of January 2010

Electric: 186.44 + $59.55 Non taxable fuel amount (WTF is that?) For 1525 Kwh
Sewage: $87.75 for 15000 gallons (no way we used that much)
Water: $35.37 for 15000 gallons (another no way)

Total: 369.11

All lights are CFL. water heater is at 120F, fridge is about midway setting. the other things that run is the TV (living room during the day, bedroom at night), Stove when I cook (30 minutes MAX), washer and dryer (twice a week, 3 to 4 loads each time). Space heater, 1500watt, at night only. And now the netbooks and accessories. We also have cellphone chargers, bluetooth chargers. that's it.

 

Scary utility charges.

 

I just pulled our Jan 14-Feb 10 2010 bill to compare. I live in southern MN.
Electric: $41.50 (303 kwh)
Water: $13.65 (3.00 CCF = 2244 gal)
Sewer: $11.54
Gas: $108.45 (gas heat and water heater)
==================================
Total: $175.67

Can you use a wired connection for one or both netbooks? Faster, more reliable connection, and should use less power!

 

Well, the experiment failed miserably. I got this months electric bill. $307. $2 less than Feb. We did find out there has been a water leak at the meter out by the road. That would account for some of it, but not all.
We haven't been cooking here, eating out every night. 1 space heater running on low just to keep the nip off at night. Washed and dried clothes at the laundry mat or a friends house. We cut back a lot. Hell during the day there isn't anybody home. The electric part was $155. Shouldn't have been that high. I know this is a huge house, but damn. My relatives bills are no where near what we get and they have bigger houses and run more electric/water.

Doesn't matter though. Our lease is up next month. We are going to find a smaller place with some requirements that we have established during out time in this house. However, I am at home today from work due to waiting on the electric company inspector to come by. Plus it's my Birthday. We're going to find out where the problem is, hopefully.

On a different note. I will be starting up the tower system again, this weekend. Only thing we really missed was able to watch downloaded movies on the tv. With the tower we can do that, so that's going back online.

RockDoctor, yea, the aspire one has been on a wired shortly after my last post. I've got, on certain things, up to 6MB/s downloads that way. Gotta love high speed internet connections, even though it is comcra.... err.. comcast.

I do have some other projects I'll be using the aspire one for. Noticed some unsecured connections and want to trace them down. Maybe help the owners of them a little bit by teaching them how to secure it a little bit.

 

No grow-op as next door neighbor, tapping into your power? Bills like that are a red flag for law enforcement.

 

Well, they didn't find anything unusual. We are looking into other things though. Yes, we are suspecting a neighbor but just not sure. No wires can be seen. Nothing looks to be connected to the main that shouldn't be.

It really does matter right now. Lease is up at the end of next month. We going to be outta here. Found a place on the other side of town (better area) for less. Closer to work, beach, my mom's house, and the mall. All the things that matter, hehehe. Would be much less on everything

 

Update. Last electric/water/sewage bill ended up being $169 this month. Not sure why as everything we've been running when the bill was high, is still running now. In fact, we cooked and washed more clothes this month than last month, but the bill was, what, half of the usual. That's great.

We're moving into an apartment next weekend. Got a great deal for a 2 bedroom with w/d hookups. This "should" drop the bill even more as 1) it's downstairs so we'll benefit from the people running air conditioning upstairs 2) better insulated than this old crappy house.

So I'll be running my big system, actually upgrading it a lot, and using the aspire one for normal every day things.

 

Maybe you already know this, but the size of the power supply in your desktop tower-pc hasn't really much anything to do with how much power it uses. The components inside the pc are the ones that matter, mainly the processor, graphics card and maybe motherboard and harddisks. You could have a pc with a 200w power supply and switch the power supply for a 650w one, and it would use as much power as before. The "650W" means just the maximum power you can take out from it.

Off course the Atom processor uses less power than a desktop processor, another option would be to switch the deskop tower pc´s motherboard to a Intel Atom 330 dualcore motherboard which uses really little power but is a bit faster than the netbooks atom processors (or so I've understood).

 

It's always a good idea to make one box do a number of jobs. My satellite TV box (an IBM Linux beast) is also a network data server with 1Tb and a number of multimedia programs (the biggest/heaviest Ipod in the world?} as well as an Ebook reader. My big multi-disk server rarely gets powered on, except to read/write CDs and DVDs.