New Computers at work ???

Easto · Post by **Easto** » Fri Apr 18, 2014 11:09 pm

I've never seen anything so small before. The housing is about 6x8x3 inches. It has 2 USB and 2 eSATA, HDMI and DVI out and it has an external walwart power supply. These did not have any markings. It says Win 7 64 bit installed. I was told they may have an SSD installed. I can hold it in the palm of my hand. Since there were no markings on the outside at all, and the IT people weren't there today, I could not ask anyone what we were looking at. I can't imagine the CPU power is anything great.

They look something like this..
http://gadgetsin.com/tag/small-computer

found it. this is what we have.
http://dandygadget.com/dandy-computer-xi3-z3ro-pro/

They'll have us using these at work. I'm shocked.

RaisinCain · Post by **RaisinCain** » Sat Apr 19, 2014 12:23 pm

Probably a flex unit running off of a Citrix/Xen Desktop server.

Easto · Post by **Easto** » Sun Apr 20, 2014 9:24 am

RaisinCain wrote:Probably a flex unit running off of a Citrix/Xen Desktop server.

Nope, I'm pretty sure this is it. The company is purchasing a new web enabled program that our whole system of shipping and tracking is going to be using but.. I don't think there is any server sided "leg up". This is it.

I'm hoping it has some sort of embedded sound card and that the monitors they bought have speakers(?). Since it's only an SSD enclosed I'll bring a eSATA docking station I have into work and backup all my stuff on it. Since the mouse and monitor will have to be wired (I don't know if it accepts wireless) that leaves me 2 eSata to work with. I'm just trying to think what I can use the last eSata port for.

RaisinCain · Post by **RaisinCain** » Sun Apr 20, 2014 1:52 pm

Not sure what you are expecting at this point. Unless you're a buyer in the IT department, I would suspect that is what you'll be using and may not have any option to do anything hardware wise that you would like to do.

Easto · Post by **Easto** » Sun Apr 20, 2014 4:23 pm

I know I'm sort of jumping the gun and being my overly pessimistic self, but these are going to be on 10 desks in our office (the others will be using their laptops and desktops that are more current than what the rest of us have). They will need to be running all the normal office programs a usual office needs i.e. MS Office etc. I'm just really skeptical that these are going to have any horsepower. And... if the PSU farts out you can't just plug in a new cord like you would with a regular computer.

Maybe I'm just old school but I like to be able to be able to get in and change out hdds, memory etc if the job calls for it. I'm not in our IT department at all. The person responsible for purchasing these saw them at the latest Las Vegas show and I guess he was sold.

Post by **YeOldeStonecat** » Sun Apr 20, 2014 6:54 pm

Yeah seeing more 'n more of those little guys (across different brands)...
Some are dual core Atoms, others (like yours) are the AMD equivalent of the Atom..the AMD G.
The SSD drive partially makes up for the lack of CPU and RAM.
They don't do well with heftier applications, and with only 4 gigs of RAM driving Win 7...combined with the humble little CPU..they're not heavy multi taskers. But for light Office apps, and especially online hosted apps like you mention..they do fine.

You can get office desks and point of sale setups looking nice 'n neat with the minimal computer equipment intrusion with these little guys.

Fit PC was a brand that really started the ultra mini wave..
http://www.fit-pc.com/web/

Cost wise...consider them almost disposable. With drive images...don't really need to increase an IT department to do troubleshooting/disassembly/repair of full sized desktops. If one of these dies, toss it, grab a new one...push an image to it, done.

Easto · Post by **Easto** » Sun Apr 20, 2014 8:37 pm

I think we should have a handful of them up and running this week. I'll report back once I'm able to play around with one of them.

Easto · Post by **Easto** » Wed Apr 23, 2014 8:52 am

The outsourced IT guy was in yesterday starting the install. One of them may be up and running this morning. I'll have to take a look. The thing is... these are even going to be used by accounting with QB and Office. I'm not sure they've got the power (but I could be proved wrong). More tonight.

Post by **YeOldeStonecat** » Wed Apr 23, 2014 9:25 am

Slowbooks....I mean...Quickbooks? Yeouch! End users will need some patience....
I run my workstation here on an i5 with 8 gigs of RAM and Quickbooks makes you whistle for a while when you launch it and log in, or do a search sometimes..
But I guess all that is relative to end users prior experience. maybe they're moving from really old doggy computers and these will seem like some improvement.
Office will be sorta tolerable...depends how heavy they use it, and what AV you have installed. May have to trim the AV to a low resource profile.

Easto · Post by **Easto** » Wed Apr 23, 2014 10:40 pm

We outgrew QB 10 years ago but they wanted to keep using it. I remember about 8 or 9 years ago they had to call the people at QB for some help and the CS rep asked how big our data file was and it almost floored 'em. I don't remember what the actual size of the file was but they said they had never heard of anyone having a data file that big. Again, I don't remember the exact size but let's say for example they recommend a maximum size of 3gb... ours was something like 50gb. You wouldn't believe how slow it works on our current computers (then again, you probably would).

The IT guy came yesterday but for some reason the PnP USB keyboards we've had and have been using aren't recognized by the new computers. I think we're making another hardware purchase for new keyboards and mice. I wasn't there when they noticed this anomaly so I can't say exactly if there is a bios to check to see if the USB ports are enabled or not etc etc.

"But I guess it's all relative". Yep, the people in my office wouldn't know a efficient smooth running computer if it bit them on the nose.

Post by **YeOldeStonecat** » Thu Apr 24, 2014 9:03 am

Pretty big...yup. Regular maintenance done on it? Quickbooks Enterprise I hope!

I'd want that Quickbooks server to be on 15k rpm SAS drives with at least 8 gigs of RAM...most like 12 or 16...and doing nothing else be serving QBs. You want a dedicated QB server for that.

TonyT · Post by **TonyT** » Fri Apr 25, 2014 8:33 am

Quickbooks = slowest program there is = years and years of what's known to developers as "spaghetti code".

CableDude · Post by **CableDude** » Fri Apr 25, 2014 8:12 pm

I guess I won't look to use Quickbooks anytime soon.

Post by **YeOldeStonecat** » Sat Apr 26, 2014 9:27 am

CableDude wrote:I guess I won't look to use Quickbooks anytime soon.

It's a good program, very universal and capable, standardized, integrates with lots of LOB apps. It's just...slow...

Easto · Post by **Easto** » Sat Apr 26, 2014 2:06 pm

I got a look at one of the new computers yesterday. Nothing more than watching it boot up but my C2D is a lot faster (and the new computer has an SSD). This is not looking good.

Easto · Post by **Easto** » Tue Apr 29, 2014 8:57 am

Ouch. My C2D at work is faster. I use Google maps a lot and usually use that as a test of how fast I can get something up on the screen. Not too impressed at this point. Did I mention we only have DSL at work? I think mine might be up and running today so I'll have my hands on opinion, but it's not looking good so far.

Easto · Post by **Easto** » Tue Apr 29, 2014 9:00 am

YeOldeStonecat wrote:
Cost wise...consider them almost disposable. With drive images...don't really need to increase an IT department to do troubleshooting/disassembly/repair of full sized desktops. If one of these dies, toss it, grab a new one...push an image to it, done.

Drive images? We outsource our IT. The only thing they do is get things running on our network and load up what the boss wants on the computer. If one dies the process starts all over again.

Post by **YeOldeStonecat** » Wed Apr 30, 2014 9:25 am

Now large is the organization? (as in how many workstations?)