Low power office computer?

[Isaac Zachary]

Originally Posted by freebeard

They didn't even let me take the Aeron chair home.

I looked at Tom's Hardware www.tomsguide.com/best-picks/best-mac-antivirus and they rank Bit Defender, Kaspersky and Norton 360 as first, second and third.

Last time I drove all the way to Fry's to get Kaspersky, because they're the ones that outed Stuxnet. But it's really hard to find. So I think I'll go with Norton. $25/year and it has a password manager and VPN.

There is already malware recompiled to run on the M1 chip.

Although you can't believe everything you see, I liked the video Linus Tech Tips did of the Bit Defender.

Personally I don't use anything other than what Windows comes with and stay away from shady websites and don't open emails from people I don't know, which seems to work fine.

[redpoint5]

Only virus I ever got was a diskette boot virus from high school programming computers. Must have been 1998. Good habits are better protection than protection.

[ME_Andy]

Agree. I haven't used anti-virus in years.

[freebeard]

Come on, man.

I'm trying for best practices here. Not running as Admin. Backup of the new machine. I'll down the AV software, update the out-of-the-box OS, down two application programs and air gap it. It's a big-ticket item and I want to protect it.

I spent 2 years in the Windows Antivirus queue at Symantec, helping the victims of Gate's and Ballmer's perfidy. The rest was helping Mac owners.

And as for staying away from shady websites, I've inadvertently clicked on links were on Ecomodder that took me to Facebook.

[Isaac Zachary]

The built in antivirus tends to be sufficient for most wrong clicks. If your computer beeps and asks you to call a number, never call the number. Just close the window, and if that doesn't work just reboot and you'll be fine.

Not running as Admin is a great idea. If it asks for a password, don't do it unless you're 100% sure it's ok.

[freebeard]

The built in antivirus tends to be sufficient for most wrong clicks. If your computer beeps and asks you to call a number, never call the number. Just close the window, and if that doesn't work just reboot and you'll be fine.

Well, obviously that's obvious. The insidious ones just sit quietly in the corner mining Bitcoin for someone else.

I called Norton tech support and a helpful young lady in the Philippines registered the product, and suggested install before the OS upgrade.

In the $25 purchase in a VPN and password manager (other features I don't need are Windows only). The second year subscription is $100, but she turned off automatic renewal and I will uninstall and buy another $25 code.

[Daox]

I compiled a list of CPUs that I think would be some okay fits. R20 and R15 are Cinebench benchmarks for single and multi-core. I am really liking the idea of the J4000/5000 series Celerons and Pentiums. The idea of the Asrock ITX boards with integrated processor is quite appealing. She does have a 3.5" HDD for photo storage that has to fit up to it.

[freebeard]

I'm one DVI to micro-HDMI cable or adapter away from having two screens available to two computers. I got a 4-inch Ethernet cable, but I could use a 2nd one. The antivirus and Bitcoin client haven't happened but I do have email again.

Anyways, Elon Musk snagged 1.5 billion in Bitcoin. This episode of 2 The Future is stating the obvious for the most part, but they have some eye-opening statistics at t=509 this is what they have to say:

08:26 So back to bitcoin. How much energy does bitcoin now actually consume?
08:31 The media always writes how insanely bad bitcoin is for the environment.
08:35 Funny though, that they leave out how much worse gold mining is.
08:40 You now, this shiny yellow metal that everyone loves?
08:43 Strange that we never hear about the carbon emissions of gold mining.
08:47 Well, turns out, gold mining consumes more than 3x as much energy as bitcoin mining.
08:53 Worldwide bitcoin mining consumes about 60TWh of energy per year worldwide.
08:59 But gold mining? Almost 200 Twh/year, more than 3x as much.
09:07 Gaming consumes almost 80TWh/year.
09:11 Fiat currency printing and Christmas lights consume together about 20TWh/year.
09:16 So lots of things that aren't really necessary also consume a lot of energy.
09:21 But who is the winner, who consumes a lot more than everyone else?
09:26 That's right ladies and gentlemen, the good old BANKING SYSTEM!
09:30 They consume about 650TWh/year, a bit more than 10x the energy consumption of bitcoin.
09:40 Yes, the guys that devalue your money, that create rampant inflation, so that you can buy less stuff,
09:47 so that you must take loans from them and remain indebted to them forever, yes, the same awesome guys consume 10x more energy than bitcoin.
09:57 Funny, right? Funny that you don't read lots of news articles how bad the banking system is,
10:02 and how much energy the banking system consumes, right?
10:05 And how bad the banking system is for the environment, right?

Later they get into using a mining rig as a resistance heater. And mining driving down the price of solar, the way pot growers did in the 1980s.

[redpoint5]

Originally Posted by freebeard

I'm one DVI to micro-HDMI cable or adapter away from having two screens available to two computers. I got a 4-inch Ethernet cable, but I could use a 2nd one. The antivirus and Bitcoin client haven't happened but I do have email again.

Anyways, Elon Musk snagged 1.5 billion in Bitcoin. This episode of 2 The Future is stating the obvious for the most part, but they have some eye-opening statistics at t=509 this is what they have to say:


Later they get into using a mining rig as a resistance heater. And mining driving down the price of solar, the way pot growers did in the 1980s.

Kinda weak points. What percent of transactions are done by banks vs Bitcoin? The power consumption per transaction in the banking system is a fraction of Bitcoin. The power consumption per dollar of stored value is also a fraction. Interesting nonetheless.

[Ecky]

I would like to point out that TDP is not maximum or even average power, and it doesn't have much to do with a processor's overall power consumption. Most modern CPUs idle very frugally, and an office computer will spend most of its time at or near idle.

I agree that a laptop will overall consume the least power. One can approach laptop levels of power consumption with careful component selection - things like a low power M.2 drive (they're surprisingly thirsty), low voltage RAM, picking one of the lower-end chipsets, and an efficient (and not oversized) power supply.

Most contemporary computers are going to be so frugal that the difference between a high-end 8 core CPU and one of Intel's Atom derivatives will likely be lost in background noise.