Only ONE socket, I want at least a dual Xeon beast!

is cheaper than a separate UPS!

Ok, I suppose it mimicks a server(ish), but I've been running Server 2003 on my bog standard IBM with no issues at all. I even get 3 hours battery life...

So um, for a 6th of the price, i get something that works, but not as server like as this..

Think I'll stick with the IBM..

As already commented, it's not designed to be routinely run without mains power - but the battery is marketed as a UPS - to keep it running whilst the mains is interrupted.

Most of the time I use my laptop like that - it's docked in the office, and at home it's plugged into the mains next to the sofa. There's very few times that I actually use it without access to mains power. I use a laptop mainly for the portability, rather than the mains-less ability.

Certainly is useful for a demo server to take around to presentations etc.

So powerful is this machine that you wouldn't even have enough battery time to show how powerful it is haha! Now THATS powerful!!!

The idea of a laptop server is hardly new. Tadpole have been pushing Sparc based servers running Solaris for years.

"three 3Gb/s SATA hard drives in a 1.5TB RAID configuration"

I want to know how that raid setup works.

Well, how about 3 x 750GB raid 5

I wonder how noisy it is, and how much heat it kicks out. And...

I guess we'll just have to wait and see.

""three 3Gb/s SATA hard drives in a 1.5TB RAID configuration"

I want to know how that raid setup works."

3x 500GB drives in a Raid 0

They never said it was good.

3 X 500GB drives in RAID 0 prehaps?

Not ideal as a server config for sure, but the larger storage number looks more impressive on the spec sheet than the RAID 5's capacity would.....

Err... what does speed have to do with capacity?

3x750GB RAID5? 3x500GB striped?

Paris, cos she's good at maths too...

is is powerful enough to run Vista?

2.5" disks move the heads of the surface before spinning down - the better ones will move the heads somewhere safe during free fall on the assumption that the drive is about to experience a shock. 3.5" disk life time limited by the number of times the heads can land on the disk before they get scraped off. 3.5" disks do not bounce anything like as well as 2.5"disks.

If you want this thing to work reliably, keep one drive shut down in reserve and set up the other two mirrored.

Think of this box as being proof against spyware and adware. It can be loaded down with crap, take part in a brute force password cracking botnet and still keep up with an eee pc.

"2.5" disks move the heads of the surface before spinning down, 3.5" disk life time limited by the number of times the heads can land on the disk before they get scraped off"

I don't know where that bit of knowledge comes from but I have in front of me an (old, old) 2.5'' Quantum Daytona that cannot move the arms off the disk and IBM Deskstar from 2001 that can move them off into a little plastic clips (the only one in my 3.5'' collection that can do that). So, fact or fiction?

The case open photo shows a warning: "CAUTION: HIGH TEMPERATURE PARTS".

Put an ice pack in your undies then.

Blend?

Re: Re: Server disks in a portable?

As for the IBM Deathstar you have I have a group of drives on my wall coverless (the tech wall of shame or dead hardware), and the only one I have is an old Quantum Bigfoot that cannot move the heads off the disc. Even an old Maxtor Diamond has the ability to just you cannot see it as instead of moving it "OFF" the disc edge it moves towards the center and gets lifted off to park there. *shrugs* just my 2 cents.

They are quoting the standard Laptop battery (Lithium Ion I assume) as a UPS, yet I've seen that with most batteries of this kind that continuous charging actually slowly breaks the battery causing it to store a lower charge, therefore not lasting anything as long as it's supposed to. So after a few months of use the UPS becomes pretty useless...

Or is that only on the really crappy & cheap Dell ones?

Looks disturbingly similar to the Rock Xtreme 64 I had.

The fans on that suck cool air in from the bottom and blow hot air out of the back and the sides. It was actually quite cool on your lap and the cat liked it because the graphics card exhaust blew hot air out of the side.

Of course, with the fans sucking air in from the bottom it makes it harder to pick up while it's running.

They are quoting the standard Laptop battery (Lithium Ion I assume) as a UPS, yet I've seen that with most batteries of this kind that continuous charging actually slowly breaks the battery causing it to store a lower charge, therefore not lasting anything as long as it's supposed to. So after a few months of use the UPS becomes pretty useless...

Or is that only on the really crappy & cheap Dell ones?

This is actually more of a design issue. Traditionally Dell laptops power up via the battery hence you can not remove the battery when the machine is on mains power. Hence Dell batteries have in my experience tended to run slightly warm even when the machine is on mains.

Most other laptops settle for a augmented supply configuration where the battery is an either/or option and gets charged via the mains when it is available. To me this latter configuration makes most sense for a UPS as a UPS should be able to handle a brown out as well as a conventional blackout.

However you do get problems with batteries when you cycle frequently my current laptop needed a new battery after 9 months of being power cycled twice a day but then most people don't need to work on a train for a stupid number of hours a day.