But I don't know what on!

After the big clean & rebuild of my ageing computer (4400+, 1GB, 7800GTX) I'm still left feeling like I'm flogging a dead horse - and I'm starting to get the itch for something "different"


1st.
The main bugbear with the present situation is noise - my machine presently hosts the entirety of the house's networked media, and although I could buy a quieter PSU I'm starting to think about the whole NAS thing again.

2nd.
I tire of fighting with TVersity and it's ropey relationship with 360/PS3 so there's the allure of a fast-booting media PC to do away with needing either to watch network content. That or I get a media player like a WDTV to pair with a NAS.

3rd.
There's the desire to be more out and about - the crackberry is great for email, but anything else is a joke - and since I can get our houses wifi in the local cafe and pub, I'm thinking a notebook or laptop (with a matte screen!) is for me.


The big game changer in my thinking about moving to a laptop is that I no longer need to have a beastly machine at home - not only because I've near stopped working at home entirely, but because if I wanted to, I can now RDC to my workstation at work - so it's not like I can't plug the netbook/laptop into either of my screens and work that way.


The thing is, I just don't know where to start. And I'd like to do all, or at least some, of this cheaply - as I'm liking the whole money-at-the-end-of-the-month thing! Sooooo.... I put it to you all. What combination/solution do you reckon would be best for someone who can't make up their own mind!?

EDIT Oh and by the way, I am way way waaaaay out of touch on all things techy these days.

Got you covered on both with a NAS and streaming device, low power home server

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/253305
Can fit 10tb+ in it along with a small laptop boot drive if you repurpose the 5.25" bay into a 3.5" and 2.5" enclosure

4GB ECC DDR3 for £50 and you have a rather decent server for £200 after cashback, have mine running WHS 2011 with 4tb in it at the minute, streams hd to my htpc without issue and use it to back up the recorded tv to it, streamed 720p mp4 without any issue along with avi and wmv files, not tried anything else tbh (going to try playing tv recorded in media centre to see if it can do the job)

I can also connect to it from the web and stream music/videos wherever I am as long as I have silverlight on the device I'm using, I reckon it draws less than 60w from the wall and runs almost 24/7 and costs a few quid a month, which is pretty much cancelling out the use I get out of my main pc now

Thanks Fin, you answered my question and I didn't even ask it yet! I've been talking about building a NAS / server for ages, and I'm never going to beat that price so I just ordered one.

Question - how many SATA ports does it actually have? I only need two for now, but I'd be looking to fit more drives in it long-term to do RAID 5.

4 internal drives fit in a rack vertically mounted with their own holders, their all use a shared proprietary port, there is another sata port on the board for hooking a DVD drive up to (will be using it for another drive) and there is also an internal USB port (so you can hook up a usb drive to install to if you wanted) and an esata port on the back

Photo of the stock hard drive layout and system in general:
http://www.silentpcreview.com/article1193-page3.html

There is also a pci-e slot (I think there are 2 but 1 uses a proprietary HP connection for their special NIC controller) so you can run a raid card if you wanted a couple more drives, or even if you wanted to run a tv tuner or something like that (need to be half height cards)

Noise wise... it is a bit noticable as it doesn't shield that much sound but isn't unbearable, could stick it away in a closet or something

That's better than I expected; looks like hot-swap bays too! I'll find out in a few days (free delivery lol)

They aren't from memory (but it might be an os limitation), don't want to find out the hard way

I turn my back on one of my threads for 2 seconds and it get's lynched by JJ & Fin having a chat about a server! Tsh!

Or even one of those silly super fast SSD cards?
Hmmm, see that's the thing - I've literally nowhere in my flat to tuck away something like this like that - but then there is the under-the-stairs space downstairs - and they use the network, and its about time the footed the electricity bill... I might just have to get them to clean it out!

That said, as "attractive" as it may be as an alternative to more expensive QNAP-style NAS boxes - it still would warrant a degree of setup and management that (ideally) I want to move away from... I mean, it's not like it would solve the absence of a HTPC, so the issue of streaming to the TV in my lounge would remain (because again, the 360 and PS3 suck proper*) - and in a way that's where I'm now leaning ... yes, it'd be nice to get a super sweet uATX form factor, atom-esque powered something as a frontend unit looking at a big NAS-of-some-kind; but if I'm going that route, I might aswell combine the two in one - and merely "look" at that from other parts of the house. But then (of course) PC-in-the-lounge-noise becomes a factor, and the cost to build/silence goes up.

I'm torn. Really torn. I spent a few hours yesterday trawling "top 10" review sites of ultra-portables and netbooks and not one got me thinking "YES! THAT'S THE ONE!" - perhaps I'm being too picky? What bites most is that I spent a few hours on Saturday speccing a pretty nice work-esque-workstation for about £800 and that's got me more excited about spending money than any of this "alternative thinking" I'm doing.... even though I KNOW I don't want to go back down that route.



*unless Windows Media Center is any good - we've never had it working to see.

It entirely depends on the TV you have and what your HTPC does, it doesn't replace mine as mine records tv, if I could (and I could if I wanted to spend £100+ on a half height blackgold tv tuner) hook up the server to record tv then use the 360 as a media centre extender... I would. In the mean time the htpc watches/records tv, archives it to the server then I can stream it to any dlna device on the network, some devices have an issue with .wtv (windows tv) but I think the 360 supports it fine

I can stream videos to my phone (that my phone can play, it has an issue with the built in MCE tv recording codec, but watching a mp4/avi is fine on the other floor to my wifi), or any other dlna device, even a boxee/popcorn hour streaming client would do to play the files, I think those are both silent too
http://www.dabs.com/products/d-link-box ... -75ZK.html

Right now I am streaming over 802.11n (the device has gigabit as does the ps3, 360 only has 10/100) Iron Man 1 and after buffering it plays back fine, it even records the subtitles so you can turn them on or off like on a DVD if you play it from media centre, so the 360 would work as it's a certified Media Centre Extenter if you ran MCE on the server (I have WHS 2011 on as it provides some extra use, no reason not to have as a proper server running 2 operating systems to serve both needs, might even be able to install MCE on Vail (WHS 2011))


Been there, done that (mini-itx with an ION motherboard, was capable of 720p freesat hd but the noise at the time was a pain because of the 40mm fan on the motherboard and used a cheap case, could take the fan off if I used a larger one over the top), the home server is considerable quieter

Got the board to sell actually if you have some desktop ddr2 ram and some time to replace a fan


What would you use it for though? you could easily make a proper server/htpc/recorder for that and use a thin client if your networking is good enough




Got a pc with windows 7 Home premium/professional/ultimate? Fire it up and have a look for yourself

Question: What are you doing with your s939 4400+? It's a dual core, right?

Yep, San Diego I believe. Presently? Using it. What I'd do with it... that's a question I've not asked myself.

that is brilliant just brilliant


want one now now

Just found it with WHS2011, 250GB HD & 3GB HERE for £300.58, or if the £100 cashback is on-top-of-that, £200.58.

I'm thinking buy that, buy SOMETHING LIKE THIS - then toy with a netbook later....

Interesting...



LOL

Quite. I called them wanting to confirm if it's £200.58 but got no answer - it seems like a silly (small) amount of money...

Fin, in layman terms, what is WHS2011? I mean, what does it do? And how does it fare against workstation OS's on the user-friendly scale ? 3.1? Win95, Win2K, WinXP, Vista, 7?

Allows you to connect in via a website (free .homeserver.com domain if you want to use that instead of your own) and stream music/video or download/upload files to it, serve content via DLNA/UPnP to devices, automate machine backups of machines on the network/restore those backups, use it as a downloading machine, create network accessible folders (even for a homegroup). This is just what I use of it, there are more uses no doubt

(I didnt secure mine properly and it was hacked into, just flattening it now as I didnt have a secure password on it... my own fault )

It's a hybrid of Server 2008 and Windows 7, so in terms of user friendlyness it's pretty high up there