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I agree that the Atom brand has been sullied, but I've often wondered if they weren't "bad" per se but were used in the wrong kinds of products. I got the impre

by jmt_ 6y ago

I agree that the Atom brand has been sullied, but I've often wondered if they weren't "bad" per se but were used in the wrong kinds of products. I got the impression they were better suited for an ATM or a vending machine that Tweets or something -- but not great for a full Windows environment, even if the user is not doing anything resource heavy. Feel similarly toward Celeron. Marketing != practical use for these CPUs IMO

tyingq 6y ago
Yeah, they have used it all over. Including the C2XXX and C3XXX for server platforms.
- mbreese 6y ago
  I used to have an Atom based server that was used for an SSH bastion for a rack-internal IPMI/LOM network and it worked great. But that’s literally all it was used for. Sometimes it’s nice to have a small server for a dedicated purpose. But would I have considered an Atom for anything else? No way. Then again, I also didn’t consider anything but an Atom for this job.
  - mlyle 6y ago
    For me, it's getting hard to consider anything other than Pi for these kinds of tasks. Yes, I could install an ancient, low-spec machine, but it'd use more power and be more bother. Biggest reason this is annoying is only one onboard ethernet.
    - mbreese 6y ago
      Now that you can boot a Pi from USB, I could see this point of view. I’ve had enough SDs die on me in a Pi that I wouldn’t trust an SD driven Pi for anything where I’d need to rely on it for remote access. I wish there was something in between Pi and Atom for this use case.
smileybarry 6y ago
They're definitely more suited to headless operations, I have two old Atom netbooks and both were much better running Ubuntu Server. One of them -- one of the earlier Atoms that only had hyperthreading and originally ran Windows XP -- was a print server for several years. (Until the fan became grindy and the keyboard stopped registering input due to 24/7 operation with the lid closed) With Windows -- either XP Home or 7 Starter -- they both barely chugged along, not to mention battery life.
squarefoot 6y ago
> I got the impression they were better suited for an ATM or a vending machine that Tweets or something Gambling machines too. There's a market for used small Atom based motherboards previously employed in betting and slot machines. They're often industrial grade really good quality hardware with plenty of serial ports even where not needed, and if lucky enough to find one with enough SATA ports, they also make excellent NAS boards. Linux support is usually complete since they're mostly used with that operating system. I had no surprises using one of them with BSD based Nas4Free.
msh 6y ago
In my experience they also work quite well in chromebooks.
vorpalhex 6y ago
> a vending machine that Tweets A vending machine where you let it post sponsored content to your twitter in exchange for a "free" soda.

by jmt_ 6y ago

tyingq 6y ago

Yeah, they have used it all over. Including the C2XXX and C3XXX for server platforms.

mbreese 6y ago
I used to have an Atom based server that was used for an SSH bastion for a rack-internal IPMI/LOM network and it worked great. But that’s literally all it was used for. Sometimes it’s nice to have a small server for a dedicated purpose. But would I have considered an Atom for anything else? No way. Then again, I also didn’t consider anything but an Atom for this job.
- mlyle 6y ago
  For me, it's getting hard to consider anything other than Pi for these kinds of tasks. Yes, I could install an ancient, low-spec machine, but it'd use more power and be more bother. Biggest reason this is annoying is only one onboard ethernet.
  - mbreese 6y ago
    Now that you can boot a Pi from USB, I could see this point of view. I’ve had enough SDs die on me in a Pi that I wouldn’t trust an SD driven Pi for anything where I’d need to rely on it for remote access. I wish there was something in between Pi and Atom for this use case.

smileybarry 6y ago

They're definitely more suited to headless operations, I have two old Atom netbooks and both were much better running Ubuntu Server. One of them -- one of the earlier Atoms that only had hyperthreading and originally ran Windows XP -- was a print server for several years. (Until the fan became grindy and the keyboard stopped registering input due to 24/7 operation with the lid closed) With Windows -- either XP Home or 7 Starter -- they both barely chugged along, not to mention battery life.

squarefoot 6y ago

> I got the impression they were better suited for an ATM or a vending machine that Tweets or something Gambling machines too. There's a market for used small Atom based motherboards previously employed in betting and slot machines. They're often industrial grade really good quality hardware with plenty of serial ports even where not needed, and if lucky enough to find one with enough SATA ports, they also make excellent NAS boards. Linux support is usually complete since they're mostly used with that operating system. I had no surprises using one of them with BSD based Nas4Free.

msh 6y ago

In my experience they also work quite well in chromebooks.

vorpalhex 6y ago

> a vending machine that Tweets A vending machine where you let it post sponsored content to your twitter in exchange for a "free" soda.