my notes
Given that I spent time and money on my FeeNAS node, I want to maximize its usage, so when a friend told me that I can use PXE and NFS to boot a diskless computer from the network, I thought it was the perfect opportunity to try somehing new and activate some more services under FreeNAS!
My HTPC lack a graphical display. I want to see the play length of my movies, the temp of my CPU and the upload/download information of my torrents.
I first thought to purchase a VFD based display, but aren’t we after year 2000? Therefore, a greenish old style display is not really appealing.
But, I found what I needed at Matrix Orbital, a Canadian based company specialized in VFD AND LCD display.
They have a complete line of character USB display. And the all mighty Matrix Orbital GX Typhoon USB Graphic Display.
All software and documentation is available on their website: http://www.matrixorbital.com/
I can deal with a limited battery autonomy, a small HDD (even more when it is easily expandable with USB ports), but I can’t resign myself to look at the world in a tiny window.
For years, I have been waiting for a good small inexpensive laptop but this is not the one I will buy. Maybe the next generation will use the whole laptop lid lost space (aka speakers), to have a decent screen size.
I think that speakers are not important on an ultra portable laptop, I might not be the Ghetto Blaster type, but yeah size does matter!
Ref.: http://eeepc.asus.com/
