Inkling wrote:Looks like a good setup. Keep us posted on how they perform.
Well since you asked.
They've had 2 weeks working with the PCs, so far everyone is extremely happy they like the small and no noise boxes. The only complaint was the bright blue power light, but a thin layer of black paint fixed that.
The business in question deals with house energy ratings (HERS), which are required in most states of Australia when building or selling houses. Think of energy ratings on fridges, dishwashers, etc but applied to the whole house. The rating of a house affects it sale price but can also affect its council rates, etc.
Like most small businesses the try not to spend money on things that aren’t needed. Originally this was going to only be a replacement for a P3 that died, however they decided that by a) ditching MS Office and going to Open Office and b) selling the 3 other old P3’s that they could upgrade everyone that was still on the P3’s.
The Shuttles average ~45w when idle and ~80w when running Orthos. These are all 90nm CPUs since the 65nm haven’t really shown up in Oz yet. The 2 AXP2500+ systems they have idle ~75w and load ~120w. Since their business deals with ECO management these sort of things matter to them and can be used as PR material.
These PCs should last them 5years+. They basically run Windows, Office and some custom software. The software vendor has released a support notice for WinXP till 2012. Considering they only dropped support for Win3.1 last Christmas I’m guessing it will be around longer.
Next up will be the replacement of the 15” CRTs for LCDs.