Old laptop for a media server ? (F11, mediaTomb, transcoding, uPNP server, etc.)

[Tim]

Linuxguy123:
>> I love the form factor.  It would be quiet and small.  Its got a monitor
>> and a keyboard and built in battery back up, for a couple hours, anyway.
>> We have a wireless card for it too... I could do administration on the
>> couch instead of in some closet somewhere.

Richard Heck:
> The only thing I might worry about is heat, and what that will do to the 
> laptop if you're leaving it on all the time. (I'm guessing you want to 
> leave it on all the time.) You could try putting the laptop on one of 
> those laptop cooler things, that has built-in auxiliary fans. I've got 
> one that plugs into one of the USB ports.

Some of the power supplies get very hot too, and it might be a problem
having a battery constantly on charge (or constantly not being charged,
since the thing is already full), on a device that's not designed to
work that way.

There's the hard drive to consider, too.  Laptop drives tend to be
designed to survive being spun up and down more than desktop drives, and
to be running less often.

-- 
[tim at localhost ~]$ uname -r
2.6.27.25-78.2.56.fc9.i686

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