Comments on: The Ultimate Asterisk Telephony Appliance

By: marc

marc — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 17:21:02 +0000

I think the new Marvell SheevaPlug will make the ultimate asterisk telephony appliance:

a few articles:

http://tinyurl.com/bp3kyx
http://tinyurl.com/b5gnjz

By: Scott

Scott — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 05:07:12 +0000

newegg's site says the gPC mini is "deactivated", possibly meaning out of stock etc. Everex's site is selling them for the sale price of $449. Hopefully the product and $339 price will come back soon?! [WM: The gPC mini was certainly a good value at $339. Given its popularity, I wouldn't count on another $339 deal for a good long while. That next $100 is the retailer's profit. As Confucius says: "You snooze. You lose." :-) ]

By: Stacy Uden

Stacy Uden — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 20:00:11 +0000

Looks like this may be out of stock at NewEgg now. Any thoughts on how this compares to an Asus Eee Box?

[WM: Night and day between this unit and the EEE PC. We have both and the gPC mini runs circles around it.]

By: Jim Carroll

Jim Carroll — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 19:33:42 +0000

Try buying one here in NZ……

[WM:Give ’em a little time. You can’t find many in the U.S. at the moment either. NewEgg bought these right off the boat. No one else has them, and NewEgg sold out quickly.]

By: kevin

kevin — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 10:20:23 +0000

Would be cool if they drop the vista license and save us a couple of bucks…..

By: ward

ward — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 02:36:14 +0000

Having played with this machine for several days now, it’s difficult to describe how "expensive" the machine feels. It really is IBM-quality from 20 years ago (for those that remember that far back). Measured against The Cool Factor, it’s every bit as nice as a Mac mini or Apple TV. In addition, the system has three air vents and runs absolutely cool all the time with no detectable noise even under heavy CPU usage. In short, you (or at least we) could not build an Atom-based mini of this quality and performance for anything close to this price. Once configured, you could certainly stick this little thing on a shelf with no monitor, keyboard or mouse and forget about it for months at a time. Amazing!

By: ksdevguy

ksdevguy — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 23:48:46 +0000

Anyone thought/tried about hooking the Sangoma U100 USB 2-port FXO off this for the ultimate mini-home-system? Might be a slick turnkey way to tie in a single analog line with a small-footprint home PBX ... ksDevGuy

By: bayamos

bayamos — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 20:36:16 +0000

That’s great to know. I did not want to purchase the unit unless I could use it with your software. After reading you posts more carefully, I now see that you are going to sell a flash drive to make it easier to install onto this computer.

I think it’s great that you have a way to monetize what you are doing, so I plan on buying your flash drive when it becomes available.

By: bayamos

bayamos — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 17:35:39 +0000

I'm a little confused. Can you install the downloadable CD image PIAF onto this machine? Does it have the drivers for it? [WM: You bet. The new PBX in a Flash 1.4 ISO installs just fine. After CentOS is installed and the system reboots, type Q to drop down to the command prompt. Run the piaf-menu and select driver A. Once it's installed, just reboot and you're off to the races. In addition, our new Atomic Flash self-booting flash drive for PBX in a Flash featuring a Fedora 10 Remix will provide a 15-minute install of the system outlined on our VPN in a Flash knol for most Atom-based systems.]

By: Mat

Mat — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 15:12:22 +0000

It does look a little like a Mac mini, but that grey section in the middle is just confusing. It’s like there are two CD drives or something. Running PiaF on a cheap AppleTV, now there’s an idea. 🙂

[WM: You’ve been reading our mind… or our articles, haven’t you?]

By: Jeff Keeme

Jeff Keeme — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 14:43:23 +0000

I say the T100 is better at a similar cost or why not build your own with an Atom Dual Core? This is an option for plan C, I suppose. I think it is time to stick with one or two different options and make those reliable. I think most would vote for the T100 and an Atom option.

[WM: We agree. For large offices, we certainly would recommend the Dell PowerEdge T100. For smaller offices and homes, this appliance provides the Atom option. For those that travel or need mobility, the Acer Aspire One provides a mobile Atom option.]

By: Stacy Uden

Stacy Uden — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 05:40:24 +0000

Nice form-factor! Any thoughts on how many users/phones this might support? And outside of the smaller form factor, how does this compare to the Dell server option?

By: Rafael Cortes

Rafael Cortes — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 01:16:48 +0000

GREAT! Just what was missing… I have some SOHOs where I have been installing some Small Factor PCs for the PBX, of course those run for about $500 from Dell so this is a great deal, and it looks better too! Too bad there’s no way to cover all the ports to make it look more like an appliance and less like a PC.

Hey Ward, I installed a PIAF in a Call Center with 25 stations… all of them are using xlite in ubuntu and a $15 USB headset… it’s been working like a charm for two months now. I did not know how it will perform in a place that has over 20 simultaneous calls for over 9 hours a day, but it’s working great!

Thanks a lot for everything!