Aleutia E2: low power to the people

Green computing frequently makes the news either for its cost-saving potential to businesses, or as a way for eco-conscious consumers to reduce their environmental footprint. But UK-based Aleutia, Ltd takes a different approach, using green to produce ultra-low-power-consumption Linux PCs for classrooms and businesses in developing countries. The company's flagship product is the E2, a compact desktop system that consumes just 8 watts.

The E2 measures 115x115x35 millimeters, is fanless, and runs from Compact Flash storage. It sports a 500 MHz VIA processor, 1GB of RAM, and comes with VGA, Ethernet, PS/2, audio-in, audio-out, and three USB ports packed onto a ruggedized aluminum enclosure. The case has screw mounts designed to match the 10x10 centimeter VESA plate on the backs of most LCD monitors, allowing for an even smaller desktop footprint.

The company sent two Compact Flash cards with its review unit, one containing a standard Debian Etch installation, and the other Aleutia's customized version of Ubuntu 8.04 LTS. Other operating system choices are available, including Windows XP, although founder Michael Rosenberg says Ubuntu accounts for the overwhelming majority of customer selections.

The base model that I tested retails for £199; options adding a Mini PCIe WiFi module or hard disks are available at additional cost. If you opt for the WiFi model, be prepared to either load a binary blob or to work with NDISwrapper; the card included is a VIA VT6655, which is supported by VIA-built closed drivers only. Alternatively, the Mini PCIe slot is unused in the base E2 configuration, so any other card of your choice is an option. The graphics situation is better; the onboard video for all E2s is a 32MB VIA CX700, running the openChrome driver.

The Compact Flash card is ready to boot; no installation required. It uses the GNOME desktop environment and a customized suite of applications, including several not common to vanilla Ubuntu, such as the Mozilla-based Songbird audio player, Mozilla Seamonkey, and MPlayer, which Rosenberg says provided the best playback performance of the available free software video players. There are also applications from the proprietary world, such as Skype, Picasa, and Google Desktop. A local mirror of Wikipedia is included as a reference, containing 4,625 articles.

Apart from these supplementary applications, however, the system is a full-fledged Ubuntu installation, capable of downloading updates through the project's official APT repositories. Rosenberg explains that the company went with the 8.04 LTS release for stability's sake on behalf of the units in the field, and that his team continues to track Ubuntu development as well as other Linux variants.

Considering the E2's low power profile, I was surprised by some of the application selections, such the inclusion of OpenOffice over the much leaner Abiword, and Seamonkey over Firefox. Songbird is an interesting project in its own right and I find it impressive in a number of ways, but it consumes far more memory than many simpler music players. Google Desktop is a CPU drain that I have never found to be worth the trouble.

At 500MHz, the E2 will strain to perform some processor- or graphics-intensive tasks. I found video playback choppy, although audio playback and Skype were flawless. Saving files to flash storage is predictably slower than writing to a hard disk, but the difference is only discernible on multi-megabyte data like downloaded audio or video. The E2 is easily capable of handling Internet and office tasks like you would expect in the classroom or in an Internet cafe. The 8 watts of electricity it consumes is roughly five percent of the power drawn by a typical desktop computer; if you did not know it was specially-engineered to be green, you might well mistake its performance for a traditional PC one generation or so behind the curve.

Video performance and write speed are two particulars that the company is taking specific steps to improve as it continues to tweak the E2's system configuration. Many of the tweaks Aleutia incorporates to improve E2 performance originate with the ever-increasing pool of Linux netbook hackers. The platforms face similar issues: flash storage of limited capacity, low-speed (by desktop standards) CPUs and graphics processors, and limited RAM.

Rosenberg chronicles the effort on the corporate blog, noting changes such as the adoption of the lightweight Fluxbox window manager to replace GNOME's default Metacity, filesystem tuning, and accelerating Firefox by storing the browser cache in RAM instead of writing it to flash storage. The team has recently been experimenting with supplanting GNOME itself with LXDE, although Rosenberg confides that the system is not yet stable enough to ship to customers. It is a promising alternative, though, as Aleutia has demonstrated that an E2 running LXDE is capable of playing video smoothly at full-screen.

Speaking of netbooks....

Despite the E2's obvious benefits from a power consumption and space perspective, once you add on the cost of a display and I/O hardware, the E2 is also similar in price to a midrange netbook -- without the portability. Thus one might well ask how Aleutia sells the E2 as a better value. Rosenberg's answer is that the E2 is designed to outperform and outlast the expensive Dell and HP Windows boxes that dominate education channel sales in developing countries, particularly in Africa. In that context, of course, a netbook's small screen and keyboard are a disadvantage. Furthermore, the E2 is designed to be easily serviced by local resellers -- a problematic board can be pulled out and replaced in a matter of minutes, unlike the more complex beige boxes.

Still, considering Aleutia's stated goal of catering to underprivileged schools, comparisons to one other high-profile effort are inevitable: One Laptop Per Child (OLPC). Like OLPC, Aleutia is targeting its machines at schoolhouses in underdeveloped parts of the world -- but, unlike OLPC, Aleutia is attempting to stay profitable.

The company highlights two differences between itself and the OLPC project. First, it operates as an open-to-all manufacturer. OLPC's XO laptops are available only to national governments, through specially-negotiated contracts. Aleutia can and does sell E2s in any quantity to any buyer. Second, Aleutia warranties its devices for three years and offers support and repair services. When OLPC has offered XOs to the general public through "Give One Get One" programs in the past, the laptops came with a 30 day warranty and no support.

The company appears to be making its case to business and schools. It currently has resellers in six countries outside the UK, and has made sales to 37 others. Rosenberg says he just shipped a classroom set of E2s and LCD monitors to a school in Musoma, Tanzania, where they await clearing customs before they can be installed. At this point, he adds, the main hurdle Aleutia faces is marketing against the billions of dollars spent each year by the larger manufacturers.

"Typically, our customers find us through blogs or just searching on Google. Internet access is much more expensive in Africa so often it's a question of [expatriates] or volunteers finding us in the UK and then putting us in touch with prospective customers back in Africa." The Musoma sale was just such a case. "The headmistress had seen the pair of E2s at the school we have case study for, contacted our local reseller, and spent the bulk of her annual budget to set up this ICT lab."

The state of the art changes fast, and development continues on successors to the E2 hardware -- including the possibility of mesh networking and optical drives. Whatever the next model looks like, though, it will build on the E2's tradition of desktop performance at remarkably low power consumption, a feat that would not be possible on a closed system.

Right now, the E2 would not replace a typical Linux hacker's primary workstation, but for a less demanding usage scenario it is worth considering. The low profile, minimal power draw, and rugged construction make it viable in conditions beyond those suitable for a traditional PC. And as Linux continues to evolve on low-power platforms, you can be sure its advantages will only increase.