But what about the laptop? Craig Gunderson sent me a tip on the $150 laptop computer (wasn’t it $100 before?).

“Lite Appliances says its Lite Computer will be based on Analog Devices’ Blackfin processor and a custom-built OS that will include Web browser, media player, IM and VoIP functions and work with online services such as Google Docs. There will be no built-in hard drive, but you can attach external storage via USB.” Wired says.

These devices are made for the web! It doesn’t have all the unnecessary power you don’t need when running tools over the web! I’d get one – just for the sake of tetsing it. But I hope they make them look better than this :)

• You probably want to access your files wherever you are in the world. Just make sure to do some port forwarding of HTTP/FTP to your Bubba and you can access it by just browsing to you public IP-address
• The Bubba is a fully functional Linux computer! There are more than 15000+ Linux/Debian applications available – just install them!
• Let Bubba stream music to your Itunes compatible music player as long as it supports DAAP.

If you have any other ideas of using the Bubba, or maybe you even got one yourself, be sure to contact us – I’d love to hear your stories!

Conclusion

Everybody needs somewhere to store their files and if you want to be able to be more flexible to access them (from your computer, your webbrowser, FTP from home, office or Internet) and you want to do it with minimal fuzz – then the Bubba is definitly for you! It offers so much more than a simple NAS – and is extremely simple, quiet and flexible.

Of course you could setup your own server and add all this functionality but then it’s out of scope of this blog – “uninstalled”.

If you’re interested in buying one, be sure to visit Excito. Thanks again for letting me borrow one!

You can either access the fileserver through your normal Windows explorer att \\BUBBA\ and there you will have the complete tree.

If you access it via FTP you have access to the home directory. If you want to access the directory tree over the web, this is possible throuh the web-admin interface.

If you want to create your own webpage to publish, just put your html files in the web-directory and when you browse to the root of the Bubba, you’ll get to that page!

What about Downloads then? Let’s say you have any FTP/HTTP/torrent download that will take hours to download and you don’t want your computer to be kept switched on? Just add it to the Download list in your Bubba and it will download it for you! Since it only consumes 10W and makes no noise at all – it’s perfect for that!

Just right-click any download link, add the link to Location and press Add. Simple as that! You can watch the progress in the interface and the files will be saved to your home\downloads folder.

Continue to part 5.

Even though most of us who live the uninstalled life, you might want to have Bubba Mini Server to handle the e-mails for you?

Just add a user and go to http://bubba/webmail/ and you’ll be logging in to the Bubba’s webmail which is based on IlohaMail. IlohaMail’s interface is pretty basic – if you want to try it, there’s a demo available.

It’s fast! It got e-mail, Contacts and Bookmarks. You can search through your folders and you have many Options, for example, you can change the appearance to fit your needs when it comes to colors and fonts. There seems to be a Calendar too but I haven’t been successful adding anything to it – probably because it needs mySQL which the Bubba doesn’t have.

The way it works is that in the Administration interface you configure your POP3/IMAP account on some server on the Internet. Then you configure this POP3/IMAP-account to an local account on the Bubba. When you login it will simply access that POP3/IMAP-account.

Continue to part 4.

All administration is performed from the webinterface.

• Users offers you to add users
• Services is where you enable the different services (FTP, DAAP streaming, Mail, Printing and Torrent downloading)
• Mail is where you configure details regarding the mailserver
• Printing is where you add the printer (most brands are supported)
• Settings are network/time/backup-restore/update
• Filemanager is the web interface to get/delete/upload your files

The administration interface is really simple and does the job fine! Continue to part 3.

So why not get your own server at home where you store all those files? Of course, you could simply build your own server, install what-ever Windows/Linux operating system and you have yourself a server. But then we’re there again – installed and not simplified. I want it uninstalled and simple! Introducing Bubba Mini Server:

The guys over at Excito were kind enough to borrow one for me! I like that!

What is it? It’s a miniature server that offers a file server, streaming media server, web, e-mail and FTP server, print server and torrent downloader! All this in a almost-totally-silent 18×12x4cm case! And it’s good for the environment (and your electricity bill) – it only consumes 10W.

Installation is extremely simple. Just plug in the power and network cable and it will switch on. The LED will flash during bootup and it takes a minute or so. Point your browser to http://bubba/ and you’re finished!

Let’s get technical! I don’t want to focus too much no the technical side but since I know most of my users want just that – here goes! It’s available in 80/320/500 GB sizes (330/385/540 EUR). It’s a 3.5″ 7200 RPM drive, a 200 MHz ARM9 CPU, 64 MB EAM, 10/100Base-TX and USB-port.

Software-wise it’s running Linux 2.6 Debian, Apache web server, Dovecot IMAP server, Postfix SMTP server, Fetchmail and Samba.

This was the first part! Continue to part 2.

It’s based on the AMD Geode CPU, 512 MB ROM, 256 MB RAM, some USB ports, network card, audio in/out and VGA.

It has some apps by default and of course Firefox. I think this would be perfect for what I’m trying to do. They don’t mention any price yet, but Reghardware mention $368. I’ll see if I can get my hands on one to borrow so I can test it…

• My vision is to make my life easier and more effective and spend less time on day-to-day problems and boring activities.

I enjoy life too much to spend it on those things. So it was then I got one of these ones. Not very “web 2.0″-ish – but I’m just waiting until I can schedule cleaning over a web interface ;)

PS. No, I’m not single and live in a bachelorpad. I actually live with my fiancé and she actually LOVES this thing! “Truly effective! I think it produce the dust itself…” DS.

I could buy myself a Mac mini – but I want to be more flexible than that. So the first thing I went out and bought was a miniature motherboard – the mini-ITX EN12000EG. Only 17 x 17 cm big – it’s small and since it’s fanless – it’s silent.

It’s like any other motherboard but it also has an CPU soldered to the board. You can run what-ever you want on it – Windows or Linux. I added some memory and a harddrive and I had a complete computer. I also added a Compact Flash reader so I could try booting from that one instead of the HD or USB-drive.

But then I needed a case. And it had to look good – my last requirement. So I spent a few hours looking at different boxes and decided for this beauty:

You have them in different colors to fit your interior design:

I would really recommend Qform in Germany if you’re planning to purchase design hardware or mini-ITX cases – they were VERY helpful!

Installing took a little bit of time but once everything was in place I was very happy with the result:

After this it was time to start installing (ok, I prefer uninstalled but I had to install at least ONE thing – some kind of “base”). But I’ll get back to that in later posts.

Are you interested in mini-ITX projects, make sure to visit mini-itx.com Projects Page.

First off I had a huge tower case. It had 2 x 2.4 GHz Xeon CPU’s, 2048 MB RAM and fitted 4 harddrives, graphics card, network card, a bunch of extra fans to keep it cool and the noise was awful. Something had to be done! Way too much power to do what I ultimately wanted to do.

It was running Windows Server 2003 since I used as a webserver, FTP-server, fileserver – server this and server that.