Aleutia E2: low power to the people
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Green computing frequently makes the news either for its cost-saving potential to businesses, or as a way for eco-conscious consumers to reduce their environmental footprint. But UK-based Aleutia, Ltd takes a different approach, using green to produce ultra-low-power-consumption Linux PCs for classrooms and businesses in developing countries. The company's flagship product is the E2, a compact desktop system that consumes just 8 watts.
The E2 measures 115x115x35 millimeters, is fanless, and runs from Compact Flash storage. It sports a 500 MHz VIA processor, 1GB of RAM, and comes with VGA, Ethernet, PS/2, audio-in, audio-out, and three USB ports packed onto a ruggedized aluminum enclosure. The case has screw mounts designed to match the 10x10 centimeter VESA plate on the backs of most LCD monitors, allowing for an even smaller desktop footprint.
The company sent two Compact Flash cards with its review unit, one containing a standard Debian Etch installation, and the other Aleutia's customized version of Ubuntu 8.04 LTS. Other operating system choices are available, including Windows XP, although founder Michael Rosenberg says Ubuntu accounts for the overwhelming majority of customer selections.
The base model that I tested retails for £199; options adding a Mini PCIe WiFi module or hard disks are available at additional cost. If you opt for the WiFi model, be prepared to either load a binary blob or to work with NDISwrapper; the card included is a VIA VT6655, which is supported by VIA-built closed drivers only. Alternatively, the Mini PCIe slot is unused in the base E2 configuration, so any other card of your choice is an option. The graphics situation is better; the onboard video for all E2s is a 32MB VIA CX700, running the openChrome driver.
The Compact Flash card is ready to boot; no installation required. It uses the GNOME desktop environment and a customized suite of applications, including several not common to vanilla Ubuntu, such as the Mozilla-based Songbird audio player, Mozilla Seamonkey, and MPlayer, which Rosenberg says provided the best playback performance of the available free software video players. There are also applications from the proprietary world, such as Skype, Picasa, and Google Desktop. A local mirror of Wikipedia is included as a reference, containing 4,625 articles.
Apart from these supplementary applications, however, the system is a full-fledged Ubuntu installation, capable of downloading updates through the project's official APT repositories. Rosenberg explains that the company went with the 8.04 LTS release for stability's sake on behalf of the units in the field, and that his team continues to track Ubuntu development as well as other Linux variants.
Considering the E2's low power profile, I was surprised by some of the application selections, such the inclusion of OpenOffice over the much leaner Abiword, and Seamonkey over Firefox. Songbird is an interesting project in its own right and I find it impressive in a number of ways, but it consumes far more memory than many simpler music players. Google Desktop is a CPU drain that I have never found to be worth the trouble.
At 500MHz, the E2 will strain to perform some processor- or graphics-intensive tasks. I found video playback choppy, although audio playback and Skype were flawless. Saving files to flash storage is predictably slower than writing to a hard disk, but the difference is only discernible on multi-megabyte data like downloaded audio or video. The E2 is easily capable of handling Internet and office tasks like you would expect in the classroom or in an Internet cafe. The 8 watts of electricity it consumes is roughly five percent of the power drawn by a typical desktop computer; if you did not know it was specially-engineered to be green, you might well mistake its performance for a traditional PC one generation or so behind the curve.
Video performance and write speed are two particulars that the company is taking specific steps to improve as it continues to tweak the E2's system configuration. Many of the tweaks Aleutia incorporates to improve E2 performance originate with the ever-increasing pool of Linux netbook hackers. The platforms face similar issues: flash storage of limited capacity, low-speed (by desktop standards) CPUs and graphics processors, and limited RAM.
Rosenberg chronicles the effort on the corporate blog, noting changes such as the adoption of the lightweight Fluxbox window manager to replace GNOME's default Metacity, filesystem tuning, and accelerating Firefox by storing the browser cache in RAM instead of writing it to flash storage. The team has recently been experimenting with supplanting GNOME itself with LXDE, although Rosenberg confides that the system is not yet stable enough to ship to customers. It is a promising alternative, though, as Aleutia has demonstrated that an E2 running LXDE is capable of playing video smoothly at full-screen.
Speaking of netbooks....
Despite the E2's obvious benefits from a power consumption and space perspective, once you add on the cost of a display and I/O hardware, the E2 is also similar in price to a midrange netbook -- without the portability. Thus one might well ask how Aleutia sells the E2 as a better value. Rosenberg's answer is that the E2 is designed to outperform and outlast the expensive Dell and HP Windows boxes that dominate education channel sales in developing countries, particularly in Africa. In that context, of course, a netbook's small screen and keyboard are a disadvantage. Furthermore, the E2 is designed to be easily serviced by local resellers -- a problematic board can be pulled out and replaced in a matter of minutes, unlike the more complex beige boxes.
Still, considering Aleutia's stated goal of catering to underprivileged schools, comparisons to one other high-profile effort are inevitable: One Laptop Per Child (OLPC). Like OLPC, Aleutia is targeting its machines at schoolhouses in underdeveloped parts of the world -- but, unlike OLPC, Aleutia is attempting to stay profitable.
The company highlights two differences between itself and the OLPC project. First, it operates as an open-to-all manufacturer. OLPC's XO laptops are available only to national governments, through specially-negotiated contracts. Aleutia can and does sell E2s in any quantity to any buyer. Second, Aleutia warranties its devices for three years and offers support and repair services. When OLPC has offered XOs to the general public through "Give One Get One" programs in the past, the laptops came with a 30 day warranty and no support.
The company appears to be making its case to business and schools. It currently has resellers in six countries outside the UK, and has made sales to 37 others. Rosenberg says he just shipped a classroom set of E2s and LCD monitors to a school in Musoma, Tanzania, where they await clearing customs before they can be installed. At this point, he adds, the main hurdle Aleutia faces is marketing against the billions of dollars spent each year by the larger manufacturers.
"Typically, our customers find us through blogs or just searching on
Google. Internet access is much more expensive in Africa so often it's a
question of [expatriates] or volunteers finding us in the UK and then
putting us in touch with prospective customers back in Africa.
" The Musoma
sale was just such a case. "The headmistress had seen the pair of E2s at
the school we have case study
for, contacted our local reseller, and spent the bulk of her annual budget
to set up this ICT lab.
"
The state of the art changes fast, and development continues on successors to the E2 hardware -- including the possibility of mesh networking and optical drives. Whatever the next model looks like, though, it will build on the E2's tradition of desktop performance at remarkably low power consumption, a feat that would not be possible on a closed system.
Right now, the E2 would not replace a typical Linux hacker's primary workstation, but for a less demanding usage scenario it is worth considering. The low profile, minimal power draw, and rugged construction make it viable in conditions beyond those suitable for a traditional PC. And as Linux continues to evolve on low-power platforms, you can be sure its advantages will only increase.
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Aleutia E2: low power to the people
Posted Feb 4, 2009 18:06 UTC (Wed) by ewan (subscriber, #5533) [Link]
There's a few boxes like this around these days; for people in the UK Viglen's Geode based MPC-L is also worth a look. The Ubuntu UK podcast folks reviewed one a while back and organised a deal with Viglen to make them available for £79.00 all-in.
Aleutia E2: low power to the people
Posted Feb 4, 2009 18:29 UTC (Wed) by Cato (guest, #7643) [Link]
Aleutia E2: low power to the people
Posted Feb 4, 2009 18:45 UTC (Wed) by ewan (subscriber, #5533) [Link]
Mine has 512Mb of RAM, cpuinfo reports the processor as a "Geode(TM) Integrated Processor by National Semi" at ~400Mhz and ~800 bogomips, and it has an 80Gb hard disk (yes, an actual rotating one). It came with a rather old Xubuntu, the speed of which was OK, but noticably on the slow side. I've since nuked it in favour of a text only Fedora 10 install, which it runs quite happily, albeit with the i586 kernel rather than the i686 one.
Aleutia E2: low power to the people
Posted Feb 4, 2009 19:59 UTC (Wed) by wtogami (subscriber, #32325) [Link]
> by National Semi" at ~400Mhz and ~800 bogomips
http://www.x.org/wiki/AMDGeodeDriver
NSC Geode is completely unsupported for the past several upstream releases of X.org.
Aleutia E2: low power to the people
Posted Feb 4, 2009 18:11 UTC (Wed) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link]
I'm very glad to see items like this get publicity, this sort of thing will work well for a large percentage of users. Linux can make systems like this very useable while anything newer than windows 98 or so won't work well on these specs.
Aleutia E2: low power to the people
Posted Feb 4, 2009 21:50 UTC (Wed) by PaulWay (guest, #45600) [Link]
Paul
Aleutia E2: low power to the people
Posted Feb 4, 2009 18:39 UTC (Wed) by dany (guest, #18902) [Link]
http://www.pcengines.ch/alix.htm
Aleutia E2: low power to the people
Posted Feb 4, 2009 20:08 UTC (Wed) by jwb (guest, #15467) [Link]
I think their device is cute and has some advantages but I don't think power saving is really among them. If you think about it on an energy instead of power basis I think it's a step backwards.
Pedants' corner
Posted Feb 4, 2009 22:07 UTC (Wed) by epa (subscriber, #39769) [Link]
Pedants' corner
Posted Feb 4, 2009 22:13 UTC (Wed) by jwb (guest, #15467) [Link]
Pedants' corner
Posted Feb 5, 2009 14:09 UTC (Thu) by epa (subscriber, #39769) [Link]
Pedants' corner
Posted Feb 9, 2009 7:53 UTC (Mon) by kleptog (subscriber, #1183) [Link]
Aleutia E2: low power to the people
Posted Feb 4, 2009 21:52 UTC (Wed) by Kamilion (subscriber, #42576) [Link]
I mean, I know it's small and VESA mountable, but... yeesh.
An Intel D945GCLF2 'Little Falls 2' board is only $96 at LogicSupply:
http://www.logicsupply.com/products/boxd945gclf2
Review: http://www.logicsupply.com/blog/2008/10/16/intels-little-...
Atom 330 dual core, Drop in a 2GB DDR2 stick for $30, and pick a case:
http://www.logicsupply.com/categories/cases/mini_itx
They even have a few NAS-style cases ;)
I dig this one myself:
http://www.logicsupply.com/products/es34069
I could only see purchasing an E2 if I was REALLY dead set on a 100x100mm VESA mount...
Aleutia E2: low power to the people
Posted Feb 5, 2009 6:16 UTC (Thu) by roelofs (guest, #2599) [Link]
Yikes, $300? I mean, I know it's small and VESA mountable, but... yeesh. An Intel D945GCLF2 'Little Falls 2' board is only $96 at LogicSupply: http://www.logicsupply.com/products/boxd945gclf2Yabbut...for some of us, "no moving parts" is a very nice feature. Intel isn't anywhere close to that--the CPU requires a fan, and I'm guessing the ATX power supply does, too. (The "NAS-style case" you point at appears to have two case fans in the front.) At only 30+W, it's not bad (and the features are indeed nice), but it's still four times as much power as the E2.
Greg
d945gclf2-based system with no moving parts
Posted Feb 16, 2009 12:28 UTC (Mon) by aleutia (guest, #56538) [Link]
Aleutia E2: low power to the people
Posted Feb 5, 2009 18:44 UTC (Thu) by ianburrell (guest, #47313) [Link]
Aleutia E2: low power to the people
Posted Feb 7, 2009 19:50 UTC (Sat) by giraffedata (guest, #1954) [Link]
Yikes, $300? I mean, I know it's small and VESA mountable, but... yeesh. An Intel D945GCLF2 'Little Falls 2' board is only $96 at LogicSupply:
OK, adding up all the parts and labor for this alternative, I get over $300, and that doesn't count the warranty and presumably uses a lot more electricity.
Aleutia E2: low power to the people
Posted Feb 5, 2009 0:37 UTC (Thu) by jordanb (guest, #45668) [Link]
The best way to do "green computing" isn't to buy a *new* computer, but to continue to use old ones that would otherwise be disposed of, where the manufacture costs are already sunk.
Aleutia E2: low power to the people
Posted Feb 5, 2009 2:17 UTC (Thu) by Simetrical (guest, #53439) [Link]
Software and the environment
Posted Feb 5, 2009 5:59 UTC (Thu) by eru (subscriber, #2753) [Link]
The best way to do "green computing" isn't to buy a *new* computer, but to continue to use old ones that would otherwise be disposed of, where the manufacture costs are already sunk.
Maybe. But the software developers (both closed and open source) make this unworkable. Every distro release brings more bloat, and the bloat seems to be growing faster than features, so you really cannot stick to older computers for more than about 8 years (in my experience), unless you stop entirely upgrading your software. But in today's networked world, than mean you don't get security fixes (who updates Red Hat 5 these days...), and you also don't see web pages and documents in newer formats (just for fun, tried Netscape 4 a few days ago on a Windows box. Crashed on the first modern web page it saw...).
I think the real way to green computing is for software developers to learn how to do more with less. This way both new low-power boxes like the Aleutia E2, and old computers become useful, and stay that way until the hardware breaks.
Software and the environment
Posted Feb 5, 2009 7:45 UTC (Thu) by Cato (guest, #7643) [Link]
These distros do have full security updates because they are just variants of the main distros. Crunchbang even includes Flash, Java and so on.
The challenge for these older machines is video - many people expect to be able to see Youtube these days. Really the only solution longer-term, as video becomes higher resolution, is to use the older machine as a thin client - LTSP and many other solutions are quite handy here, and the free VMware server makes it quite easy to centrally host Windows images for thin client use within the home through VNC.
Software and the environment
Posted Feb 5, 2009 11:12 UTC (Thu) by eru (subscriber, #2753) [Link]
Yes, the light-weight distribution variants alleviate the problem somewhat, but they really can only change some of the system layers (like the desktop) less resource-intensive. They cannot make OpenOffice.org or Firefox less bloated. Another problem is that these are oddbal variants which are a bit different to use from mainstream distributions, so less sophisticated users will find it harder to get help with them from books or magazines. The use case I have in mind here is a non-geek relative or friend running a virus-infested Windows98 on an old machine... how to linuxify him/her without purchasing new hardware?
Quote [...] Crunchbang, which runs fine in just 200 MB RAM [...]
See the problem here? 200Mb is *huge* if that is needed just to run the OS and basic desktop utilities without undue delays (as opposed to running some application that really puts lots of memory to good use). Circa 1995 I used to run OS/2 Warp on a 75Mhz Pentium with 32MB. It was about as user-friendly as the today's Linux desktops, and did not feel any slower. So just *where* does all that computing power go? I can think of two visible differences between my 1995 desktop and current: 8-bit vs 24-bit colour, and antialiased fonts, but I don't think that comes even close explaining the difference.
The challenge for these older machines is video - many people expect to be able to see Youtube these days. [...]
I have found a 600Mhz P3 to be quite sufficient for decoding standard definition and below, when you use a well-optimized player (Mplayer seems to be the gold standard here), and your display supports the Xvideo extension properly. But HD content clearly goes out of reach. Does piping video around the house with VNC really work? AFAIK its encoding is not optimized for photorealistic video (as opposed to desktop graphics that have large smooth regions), so you will be transmitting and forcing receiver to decode vastly more bytes than with a real video codec.
Software and the environment
Posted Feb 5, 2009 11:21 UTC (Thu) by Cato (guest, #7643) [Link]
SliTaz is an even lighter variant that looks promising as well. In all these cases you'll need to help the friend/relative get started, but at least Crunchbang and others provide live CDs and an easy install process - no different to standard Ubuntu in that case.
I'm counting a couple of running apps such as browser and word processor in the memory usage. Crunchbang and SliTaz clearly use way less than 200MB just to start up.
As for video, I found a 700 MHz PIII too slow for Youtube Flash videos, which is the key application for Joe Public. You are probably right about VNC not being optimal for video, but perhaps it would work OK for smaller Youtube-sized videos (not full screen) - I have used SSVNC logged into a remote system showing a webcam view from Skype and it does work over the Internet, using SSH over VNC, but not very well. I'm reasonably sure that smaller videos would work fine over 802.11g WiFi, but not SD or HD TV of course.
Software and the environment
Posted Feb 5, 2009 12:25 UTC (Thu) by eru (subscriber, #2753) [Link]
As for video, I found a 700 MHz PIII too slow for Youtube Flash videos, which is the key application for Joe Public.Odd. I recall having success with Flash with an old machine of about that speed (I don't have access to it right now so cannot check). Video playback is really sensitive to having a correct X11 setup: even a faster processor cannot play video smoothly, if it has to update the screen in the generic way, instead of the Xvideo. The display bit depth may also matter.
Software and the environment
Posted Feb 7, 2009 15:21 UTC (Sat) by cortana (subscriber, #24596) [Link]
Software and the environment
Posted Feb 10, 2009 14:00 UTC (Tue) by man_ls (guest, #15091) [Link]
The challenge for these older machines is video - many people expect to be able to see Youtube these days.The problem here is the very defficient proprietary Flash plugin. Once you download the video as .flv MPlayer can play them just fine even on low-powered devices such as these -- they are just grainy low-res videos.
Sadly, the free Flash players are even worse. The MPlayer plugin for firefox is a much better solution right now performance-wise, but getting to the videos is not easy. There are special download pages and plugins, but they tend to break every few months.
All in all an exercise in futility. It would be so nice to have a fast stable client for Flash video.
Software and the environment
Posted Feb 5, 2009 7:58 UTC (Thu) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link]
Aleutia E2: low power to the people
Posted Feb 5, 2009 10:47 UTC (Thu) by mjthayer (guest, #39183) [Link]
Aleutia E2: low power to the people
Posted Feb 5, 2009 11:32 UTC (Thu) by Cato (guest, #7643) [Link]
Aleutia E2: low power to the people
Posted Feb 15, 2009 21:05 UTC (Sun) by muwlgr (guest, #35359) [Link]
If 8 watts is still too high
Posted Feb 5, 2009 12:38 UTC (Thu) by pjm (guest, #2080) [Link]
People who really need low power consumption (e.g. the OLPC people say that their target is 2W for computer+display combined) might consider looking for or waiting for non-x86 systems. The Beagle Board claims to draw up to 2W and to offer very roughly the same CPU speed. Nokia Internet Tablets typically use less than 2W [ref] including wireless and I believe including their display (though have slower CPUs). I'm not saying that either of these are direct competitors to the E2, but they do suggest that one can get better than 8W if power consumption is very important and one is prepared to work on it and/or wait a while. (And if Aleutia are reading this, something you might look into.)
beagle board a brilliant idea
Posted Feb 16, 2009 12:22 UTC (Mon) by aleutia (guest, #56538) [Link]
Ordering one and will comment if we commercialize it.
beagle boards and other low-power systems
Posted Feb 16, 2009 23:10 UTC (Mon) by pjm (guest, #2080) [Link]
The display is typically a significant drawer of power, so note a couple of issues relevant to output: the Beagle Board has HDMI and S-Video output but not VGA. See also the above page's comments on interfacing to raw LCD panels.
Also of interest is http://linuxdevices.com/news/NS7369895239.html (which would be a competitor for Aleutia) and related products such as the eBox systems (note there are both DX and earlier SX versions) and their associated underlying systems-on-chip. (Note that it's the system-on-chip that has the low power consumption; I haven't found any claims as to how much power the computer as a whole uses, making me suspect that the system as a whole doesn't have so impressive a number.)