Lenovo M58p Eco USFF: Green Corporate SFF PC
Posted: Thu Jun 11, 2009 12:22 pm
Discussions about Silent Computing
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https://www.silentpcreview.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=54105
Thanks for the eyes, typos corrected.rpsgc wrote:Nice article and nice system (although plagued with same rather poor component choices) but with a little too many typos
Last line of the last paragraph on page 4:
"These miserly power figures alone are enough to put the L1940p monitor on the top of the want list for many green-conscious PC users."
-Measly/Meager?
??? What are you suggesting, that these things have built-in trojans or something? Please explain... and how do you know this?fri2219 wrote:Lenovo is on the do not buy list for most Pharma, Biotech, and any other industry the PRC has targeted for espionage.
Any research institution stupid enough to put one of these in their labs or offices probably deserves what they get. I'm sure the wonderful folks in the PLA wouldn't want any of your data, though, so go ahead and give it a try.
From a business PC perspective, I can see why they would leave out the memory card reader. I was recently at a larger business to train some people and wanted to load up some test data and software for them. They had to have an IT guy come out and enable USB in the BIOS of one of the PCs as they keep it disabled by default using PS2 keyboard/mouse. Now where this is annoying, if you have 100s of employees popping thumb drives and memory cards in at random probably some with viruses on them, that can cause some head aches. Although that didn't seem to help too much as one of the guys had his PC constantly bogged down because Norton was popping up constant messages about a problem. And another guy gave me a thumb drive to put a document on which my antivirus found stuff on it....and the absence of any memory card readers. The latter seems like an unnecessary ommission as memory cards have become ubiquitous. Surely, business people also use digital cameras, videocams and other devices that require frequent access to memory cards.
By that argument, both card readers and USB ports should be banned because of the security risk?BillyBuerger wrote:Just started reading the article but wanted to make a note of something...
From a business PC perspective, I can see why they would leave out the memory card reader... I'm just saying that there could be reasons to not include something as simple as a memory card reader....and the absence of any memory card readers. The latter seems like an unnecessary ommission as memory cards have become ubiquitous. Surely, business people also use digital cameras, videocams and other devices that require frequent access to memory cards.
done.jessekopelman wrote:Energy usage should be W*s, not W/s (you calculated it correctly, just wrote it wrong). Probably better to divide by 3600 and express it as kWh, since this is what people are familiar with from their utility bills.
Well, here in my group we repartition the HDD and throw SuSeLinux on them, anyway. It's kind of hard to introduce "nefarious stuff" then, last time I checked BIOS-trojans are not quite common.fri2219 wrote: Any research institution stupid enough to put one of these in their labs or offices probably deserves what they get. I'm sure the wonderful folks in the PLA wouldn't want any of your data, though, so go ahead and give it a try.
Yes. SAS70, Sarbanes Oxley, etc pretty much force companies to disable USB, CDR, Floppy, etc to reduce the chance that someone can walk out with company data (financial or otherwise).MikeC wrote:By that argument, both card readers and USB ports should be banned because of the security risk?BillyBuerger wrote:Just started reading the article but wanted to make a note of something...
From a business PC perspective, I can see why they would leave out the memory card reader... I'm just saying that there could be reasons to not include something as simple as a memory card reader....and the absence of any memory card readers. The latter seems like an unnecessary omission as memory cards have become ubiquitous. Surely, business people also use digital cameras, videocams and other devices that require frequent access to memory cards.
Closer to 10W. The 3.5" HDD idles at 7-8W instead of 1W for a 2.5". 6-7W DC means 8~10W at the wall socket. The memory difference might count for something, maybe a watt or 2. Not sure if the CPU would change anything.matt_garman wrote:I'm curious how much power that would consume at idle if as many components as possible were replaced with SPCR's standard Intel testing:Maybe about five watts total?
- PC3-8500 (1066 MHz FSB) -> PC2-6400 (800 MHz FSB)
- 3.5" 5400 RPM drive -> 2.5" 5400 drive
- E8400 CPU -> E7200
Hmm... I'm veering a little off-topic here, but the Q45 chipset interests me from a low-power fileserver/NAS perspective. Shaving 10 watts with the above changes would make that system competitive with the GA-MA74GM-S2. Might even be able to beat it by going with an E5200 and even slower memory.MikeC wrote:Closer to 10W. The 3.5" HDD idles at 7-8W instead of 1W for a 2.5". 6-7W DC means 8~10W at the wall socket. The memory difference might count for something, maybe a watt or 2. Not sure if the CPU would change anything.matt_garman wrote:I'm curious how much power that would consume at idle if as many components as possible were replaced with SPCR's standard Intel testing:Maybe about five watts total?
- PC3-8500 (1066 MHz FSB) -> PC2-6400 (800 MHz FSB)
- 3.5" 5400 RPM drive -> 2.5" 5400 drive
- E8400 CPU -> E7200
But you didn't get rid of the "/" which is what I was primarily objecting too. It should be written: kWh or kWhr or KWH or kW*hr or some variation of those, but there is definitely no dividing going on! Normally I don't see the point in being pedantic about these things, but writing it correctly makes it clear on how the math works.MikeC wrote:done.jessekopelman wrote:Energy usage should be W*s, not W/s (you calculated it correctly, just wrote it wrong). Probably better to divide by 3600 and express it as kWh, since this is what people are familiar with from their utility bills.
I stand corrected... yet again.jessekopelman wrote:But you didn't get rid of the "/" which is what I was primarily objecting too. It should be written: kWh or kWhr or KWH or kW*hr or some variation of those, but there is definitely no dividing going on! Normally I don't see the point in being pedantic about these things, but writing it correctly makes it clear on how the math works.
I don't think this is accurate. The brand was not failing under IBM management by any means. However, IBM's overall focus has been to move away from low margin activities (manufacturing of commodity devices) to high margin activities (consulting and R&D), for the past 15 years. Making and selling large volumes of Wintel PCs is a low margin commodity business. My understanding is that IBM sold the PC division (including some brand names, a few technical resources, and existing sales contracts) to Lenovo for a decent profit. Lenovo, like many Chinese OEM was desperate to get brand credibility in the Western world, so that they could charge a premium over generic OEM who operate solely based on manufacturing efficiency and have barely any margins. Since Lenovo was already manufacturing the Thinkpads, the most lucrative line of IBM's PC division, this was an obvious deal for them.Rebellious wrote:Thanks Mike.
IBM had some very talented people, and they did some very creative work, also some really stup[id things, like the proprietary mobo you mentioned in your review. So the Thinkpeople went out of business, and their jobs exported. I still have my 10+ yr-old Thinkpad, a marvel of misused ingenuity.
Tiny OT: The virus/trojan/malware part can satisfactorily be prevented by simply implementing Microsoft's (XP Pro, Vista) Software Restriction Policy and forcing people to use restricted User accounts rather than letting them use the poweruser/admin accounts. This will prevent all unauthorized executables from being run be it from usb-sticks, user folders, e-mail attachments, drive-by-downloads, cd's etc.BillyBuerger wrote:Just started reading the article but wanted to make a note of something...
From a business PC perspective, I can see why they would leave out the memory card reader. I was recently at a larger business to train some people and wanted to load up some test data and software for them. They had to have an IT guy come out and enable USB in the BIOS of one of the PCs as they keep it disabled by default using PS2 keyboard/mouse. Now where this is annoying, if you have 100s of employees popping thumb drives and memory cards in at random probably some with viruses on them, that can cause some head aches. Although that didn't seem to help too much as one of the guys had his PC constantly bogged down because Norton was popping up constant messages about a problem. And another guy gave me a thumb drive to put a document on which my antivirus found stuff on it.
I'm just saying that there could be reasons to not include something as simple as a memory card reader.
If it made noise, I would have reported it. The thing made no noise whatsoever. However, having said that, I have to caution that sometimes, such noises can be hit or miss, a different sample of the same model might exhibit the squeal.... no way to be absolutely certain about this -- same with motherboards, PSUs, video cards.b3nbranch wrote:I noted with great interest the low power consumption of
the monitor. Were you able to lower the brightness without
creating noise? My Viewsonic VG2030wm squeals hideously
if I take the brightness below 96%. I could save ~10 watts at
75% brightness but that's just impossible.