Lets face it, anyone visiting this site has an interest in smarter ways of consuming information, and often if your a real hobbyist you wind up with a ‘system’ over here to run this , and box there to run that, all taking up space , raising your electic bills , reducing WAF and increasing home admin duties.

For me , the need to leave a workstation or a laptop running to download something , run my VOIP PBX or some other ‘always on’ task, results in  large amount of computing power to do the simpliest tasks. Or put it another way , a sledgehammer to crack a walnut. The good news is that a new wave of more powerful and flexible ‘plug’ based computers are appearing on the market place with offerings from Tonido and from Marvell .

These low cost ($99) plug in units can be put to a wide range of computing tasks and because they use only 5-13watts, and are arguably one of the smallest practical form factors , keep those energy bills down and WAF levels up. 

Highlights for the Tonido unit include :

  • Energy efficient green device
  • Convert your USB drive to Network Attached Storage
  • Extend your TonidoPlug with new apps from Tonido App store
  • Access your TonidoPlug using own URL (http://yourname.tonidoid.com) via Dynamic DNS
  • Share and sync files, photos and music without uploading
  • Drag-and-Drop file and folder uploading to your TonidoPlug from Windows
  • Listen to your MP3s from anywhere
  • Download Torrents to your USB drive from anywhere
  • Search and download your files
  • Manage your calendar, contacts, and tasks
  • Keep a personal blog, capture and store web snippets
  • I’m going to be trialling a unit in the next few weeks as an always on replacement for my VOIP PBX, so watch out for a following posting of how well that goes.

    Read more on these devices and the uses people are finding to put them to over at plugcomputer.org

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