[PLUG-AV] Lotterywest chat

[Jason Nicholls]

Hey James,

Nice - seems like Lotteries is a good option, better even except for the
potential delay.


> I think we should re-price our
> requirements based upon new. I don't know if new Macbooks have firewire.

Looks like it's been removed from the low end version (the white plastic one),
still in the MacBook Pros (13" start at $1399 so not exactly cheap).


> So what do we look at for ultra small/portable, firewire, audio in (mic
> & line in?), audio out, and ethernet? Camera encoder stations do not
> necessarily need to be gigabit ethernet, but thats nice if we were to
> chose to farm out post-capture encoding jobs to them?

Well if we don't need a screen/keyboard then the Mac Mini's can do the trick
with built-in firewire and $899 (which if I remember correctly was cheaper
than those SFF boxes you linked to once before).

At $899 it might be cheaper to get a cheap laptop + firewire card if it has
an expansion slot, I haven't looked into anything but laptops are my
preference because of the built-in keyboard, mouse, screen, and UPS :)

BTW I have a MacBook cause it was cheap at auction, not cause I'm a Mac
person. I also have a mac mini at home because it has a tiny power draw
and I'm a crazy hippy greeny with my own solar power system. In both
cases I only run Linux (Ubuntu) on them so for me it's simply a matter of
cost and appropriateness (low power draw, intel, can run linux). IOW I'm
not trying to push mac hardware on everyone!


Jason Nicholls
jason at mindsocket.com.au
0430 314 857