Cheap Library W/Ss with Atom CPUs

[BatchFile]

I'm thinking of getting ten of these:

Arianet Low Power Intel Atom Mini PC System - Aria Technology

for use in the library at school. Up there the PCs are used for MS office and web browsing (and I'd install XP rather than Vista!). Do you reckon they'd be up to the job?

 

I was looking at some Dell small form factor PCs, but these are like half the price...

[BatchFile]

Anyone got any experience of the performance of an Intel Atom for day to day stuff?

[Sirbendy]

I have - I'm typing on an N270 1.6 now..

 

Impressive little sucker. It lives in my Linux powered Acer Aspire one netbook. Hyperthreaded, and doesn't blub when I give it an XP VM to run in conjunction with the mail client, several browser windows, OpenOffice 3, RAdmin under WINE for remote support, while also supporting the graphical effects of Compiz-fusion with shadowing/transparency/visual effects.

 

In fact, I'll give it what's due - it kicks the bum of my Sempron desktop, and most of the kit we have here...!

 

I was only using this AA1 for "on the go" mobility - now I'm finding it more of a pleasure to use than my desktop ever was.

 

Also, bear in mind I'm running this all from 8gb flash SSD, which is reputedly slower than conventional disks. My VM actually lives on an SD card in the reader slot.

 

Still use my home dualcore for demanding stuff, like rendering etc..but this little machine is more than capable of standing in for it.

[BatchFile]

In that case... they should be fine!

Many thanks