Aleutia E2: Tough, Tiny & Green
I’m a sucker for geek gadgets. Keyfob wifi-finder? Check. PVR set to stun? Check. Telnet on my cellphone? You better believe it.
Aleutia is one of the other businesses at Nonsense HQ. I borrowed one of their rugged, low-power PCs after seeing them knocking around the office.
The Aleutia E2 is a tiny Linux box that’s built like a tank, runs on air (almost) and ships for a pocketbook-friendly £199.
The CPU is about the size of four stacked CDs and weighs in at just over half a kilo. That means it’s small and light enough to mount on the back of the optional low-power monitor.
The E2 is built to be tough. It’s entirely solid state, using Compact Flash storage, and with a rugged case that feels like it could survive a parachute drop.
Unsurprisingly, Aleutia’s biggest fans at the moment are NGOs in Africa and Americans living off grid, but there’s plenty of room for a little imagination closer to home: file servers, print servers, you name it.
The machine comes pre-installed with your choice of Ubuntu or Puppy Linux plus Firefox, Skype, OpenOffice, a full dump of Wikipedia and a stack of other open source freebies. Everything works out of the box, so there’s no setup headaches.
The E2 uses 96% less power than a typical desktop, so can run from a solar panel or for a staggering 24 hours on a standard car battery. Even with a low-power LCD monitor, and power consumption is a mere 18 watts.
The E2 comes with a three year hardware warranty, thee years tech support and a money back guarantee. What’s not to like?
You can learn more about the Aleutia E2 care of Sky News:
I have an Eee PC. Similar spec (Solid state, OpenOffice, Skype, Firefox, etc) and price. It also has a screen and is wi-fi ready. The Aleutia looks good, though.
Although I’m not convinced by the ‘standard car battery’ line. Not many people keep one of those in their office.
@Fraser: Haven’t seen the Eee PC, but sounds similar. I believe Aleutia are aiming for more niche markets: think NGOs in Africa, people living in the Mesas of New Mexico etc, hence the car battery comparison.
Nice – might get myself ones of these next month.
Would be good if it had a TV adapter as then I could replace my extremely noisy Xbox (which I only have for Xbox Media Center)!
They should get themselves an affiliate programme too – send them my way! 😉