Eric Raymond (ESR) has an interesting post on the death of midrange computers. Some time ago he predicted that in the future we would all carry around smartphone-derived computers in our pockets and plug them into stationary keyboard/screen/pointer devices that can’t be miniaturized because their size is scaled to their human users. Now, he says, we have reached a midpoint in that journey.
Specifically, stationary computers—basically computers that aren’t laptops—are evolving into two subspecies: large, powerful systems for specialized work such as big data manipulation or animation or video processing and small, fanless, low powered systems that perform duties such as mail servers, firewalls, and DNS servers.
The small systems are a win because they’re quiet and don’t draw much power. They’re perfect for the types of small networks that many of us maintain at home. I used to hand build tower PCs to handle the mail/firewall/DNS chores but sometimes it felt like I was in the middle of a wind storm when I sat in my office. Having small quiet machines do these chores mean you can work in relative silence. I’ll definitely be looking into following ESR’s lead in moving to these small, quiet systems.
If you have a story to share about using such systems or if you have some recommendations on particular systems, leave a comment. I’m sure all of us would be interested.