14 DAY TRIAL // It looks as if there is an explosion of ultra low power computers and alternative computing systems designs as a British company named Inveneo decided to get to the bottom of the computing business and release yet another system aimed at low power consumption, low price tag and ease of use.
Coming with a marketing slogan like "Connecting villages around the world", the Inveneo Computing Station is intended for use in rural locations like schools, sanitary clinics, offices and community centers. In order to make the design easily affordable and at the same time resilient, Inveneo selected off the shelf products from hardware manufacturers and integrated them in a single compact design that can withstand the rigors of rural life. The Inveneo Computing Station comes as a ready to use system, composed of a LCD display, computing unit, mouse and keyboard. On the software side, the system comes with mostly open source software like OpenOffice and Inveneo Desktop 2.0 while other selections like Xubuntu Linux or Windows XP are optional.
On the hardware side, the computer uses the ultra low power AMD Geode LX800 that runs at 500MHz and is specially designed for low power consumption and high-energy efficiency. As system memory, there are 256MB of RAM and for storage, there are 2GB of flash memory and an optional hard disk drive of 40GB. The LCD monitor of 14.1 inch is fully VESA compliant and it supports resolutions of up to 1600x1200 at a high refresh rate of 90Hz.
As the computing unit has mostly a solid state design which eliminates the need for cooling fans, hard disk drives and other moving parts, it is more suitable for use in extreme environments. As the whole system can operate with only 12V of DC power, the energy can be obtained from solar energy panels. Since Inveneo Computing Station is based on an open hardware design and it runs mostly on open source software, all hardware and software plans are published on the Internet and developers are encouraged to improve and customize the current designs.