Quiet computer

[David King]

>>>> I am looking for a small computer that is silent or very quiet  
>>>> to sit
>>>> in a home office.
>>> I think you might want to wait a month or two until Intel Core 2
>>> "Conroe" and "Allendale" become more readily available.
>> Indeed (less than a month later), a vendor called Shuttle just
>> released this machine: <http://sys.us.shuttle.com/X100.aspx>
> I wonder how much this thing costs... They are comparing it against
> Mac mini on their own web-site, and as far as space, quietness, power
> consumption and price are concerned, Mac mini is definitely a winner
> among the two :)

It runs at just over $1,000 (USD) for the one with the Core Duo. Yes,  
the Mac Mini does look to be a winner between the two, but I'd like  
to run FreeBSD natively instead of messing with Boot Camp. You see,  
instead of trying to hunt down a few years worth of configuration  
changes and make them all again in a new FreeBSD install, I'd like to  
move the hard drive right out of my current server into a new one,  
whereas if FreeBSD isn't running natively but instead requires Boot  
Camp, I can't do that, as Boot Camp requires a partition on the hard  
drive (and, to make it in the first place, a space-wasting install of  
OS X)

>> They call it their X100 and it's just smaller than a cereal box. It
>> has an Intel Core Duo in it.
> That's not what I was talking about: X100 is based on Core Duo, not
> Core Duo 2, which is the newest, latest, fastest and cheapest
> processor available :)
> You might as well want to wait until the new Mac mini now, rumours say
> that it's about to be released quite soon:
> http://www.thinksecret.com/news/0608macmini.html (2006-08-29)

You're right, I stand corrected, it's a Core Duo, not a Core 2 Duo  
(dumbest name ever).

> BTW, back to your question about FreeBSD on Mac mini, you probably
> will not have any problems with booting FreeBSD on Mac mini, as it
> seems to work with OpenBSD after some update by Apple:
> http://undeadly.org/cgi?action=article&sid=20060817213709

Yes, but it runs within Boot Camp, instead of being booted directly  
from EFI, so it requires the aforementioned partition, keeping me  
from directly moving my hard drive.