- Nov 12, 2013
- 8
- 0
- 10,510
Alright so I have been doing some research over the past few weeks on what notebook to get next. I currently have a Macbook Unibody 13" with the Core2 processor, it does everything I need it to, and only seems to really strain itself when I run a Virtual Machine. I'm going to be going to school for IT Security and I'm looking at getting getting a new machine. Some considerations.
For ARM computers I have been mostly looking at the dev-boards (Raspberry Pi, BeagleBone, and Hackberry) the mini-computers (Utilite, cubox, etc etc) and my personal favorite, the cheap "Android Netbooks" that are available on EBAY and amazon. While the Chinese netbooks have gotten a lot of bad reviews and press, I believe this is to unrealistic expectations and poorly educated consumers. They are essentially first gen tablets with a keyboard and touchpad, the appeal to me is the ethernet and USB ports (Raspberry Pi server's with out having to worry about a keyboard, mouse and getting screen hooked up for setup). The other option is just getting a high end tablet and a docking station, which would give me the ethernet ports and USB ports with much more processing power. I really don't plan on using the google play store all that much except for maybe trying to download native apps to utilize the Android OS to run a media/shared drive server and play around with SSH/VNC/VPN. The main appeal to the chinese Android netbooks is price, get them new for 100$ +- or used for 50$+-, a tablet, docking station and keyboard and mouse would run 3-10X that depending on what tablet I get.
On the X86 side of the house I am at the same point, I want to keep it small (under 12 inches) but that still leaves me with anything from a Tricked out Haswell Macbook Air, to a Asus EeePC 7" with a first gen Celeron. The new W4 Acer tablet is appealing because its the cutting edge and obviously with technology thats were the development lies, X86 tablet, hooked up to a dock, is essentially just a netbook with a touch screen. Once again price on the Asus EeePC would give me the same networking capabilities at a fraction of the cost. In the middle we have things like the Acer 1015E (windows 8, Celeron 847) and the newer Vivobooks.
Basically I'm looking to see where everyone else is at with investing their time, do you say screw it take the plunge and go all in on ARM? The newest X86 Platforms on tablets and work to make those viable network diagnostic tools with docking stations and keyboards? Getting the W4 Acer and related equipment and a 50$ arm netbook seem to be where I'm at right now, the ARM netbooks aren't anywhere near outdated from a Hardware perspective, and it would give me the same abilities as a tablet software programing wise, while giving me organic ethernet and usb ports. Then work on overcoming the docking station and tablets with the more supported and familiar X86?
Which instruction set do you guys think will be the biggest "cool thing" in the IT Security world in the upcoming years? ARM is cheap and low operating costs (30-40 raspberry Pi's is still only 1400$ overhead and 28amp@5v draw combined). X86 has a lot of development backing and everyone is already invested in it.
■ Is the ARM instruction set going to step into the consumer market outside of Android and iOS. We already have Linux platforms for it and from what I have read, several secondary computer manufacturers are already looking into ARM Servers, also Red Hat is developing 64bit software. I'm wondering if ARM is finally going to step up similar the way AMD has, or if it is going to end up like PowerPC's consumer holding. There are a lot of ARM mini-PC's on the market that if the right software was available, would probably be more appealing than the low end X86 pc's.
■ Should I consider looking into an older PowerPC macbook to learn that instruction set. While PowerPC has died out of the mainstream consumer market, it still has a presence in the server corporate world. Are PowerPC emulator's effective enough to learn the differences between X86 and PowerPC?
■ Will ARM start to increase its presence in the server world or will it end up like SPARC?
For ARM computers I have been mostly looking at the dev-boards (Raspberry Pi, BeagleBone, and Hackberry) the mini-computers (Utilite, cubox, etc etc) and my personal favorite, the cheap "Android Netbooks" that are available on EBAY and amazon. While the Chinese netbooks have gotten a lot of bad reviews and press, I believe this is to unrealistic expectations and poorly educated consumers. They are essentially first gen tablets with a keyboard and touchpad, the appeal to me is the ethernet and USB ports (Raspberry Pi server's with out having to worry about a keyboard, mouse and getting screen hooked up for setup). The other option is just getting a high end tablet and a docking station, which would give me the ethernet ports and USB ports with much more processing power. I really don't plan on using the google play store all that much except for maybe trying to download native apps to utilize the Android OS to run a media/shared drive server and play around with SSH/VNC/VPN. The main appeal to the chinese Android netbooks is price, get them new for 100$ +- or used for 50$+-, a tablet, docking station and keyboard and mouse would run 3-10X that depending on what tablet I get.
On the X86 side of the house I am at the same point, I want to keep it small (under 12 inches) but that still leaves me with anything from a Tricked out Haswell Macbook Air, to a Asus EeePC 7" with a first gen Celeron. The new W4 Acer tablet is appealing because its the cutting edge and obviously with technology thats were the development lies, X86 tablet, hooked up to a dock, is essentially just a netbook with a touch screen. Once again price on the Asus EeePC would give me the same networking capabilities at a fraction of the cost. In the middle we have things like the Acer 1015E (windows 8, Celeron 847) and the newer Vivobooks.
Basically I'm looking to see where everyone else is at with investing their time, do you say screw it take the plunge and go all in on ARM? The newest X86 Platforms on tablets and work to make those viable network diagnostic tools with docking stations and keyboards? Getting the W4 Acer and related equipment and a 50$ arm netbook seem to be where I'm at right now, the ARM netbooks aren't anywhere near outdated from a Hardware perspective, and it would give me the same abilities as a tablet software programing wise, while giving me organic ethernet and usb ports. Then work on overcoming the docking station and tablets with the more supported and familiar X86?
Which instruction set do you guys think will be the biggest "cool thing" in the IT Security world in the upcoming years? ARM is cheap and low operating costs (30-40 raspberry Pi's is still only 1400$ overhead and 28amp@5v draw combined). X86 has a lot of development backing and everyone is already invested in it.
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