Meeting Room PCs (and/or Home Theater PCs)

[Jeff Golas]

Currently shopping for a couple "tiny" form factor PCs for our conference rooms. Looking at the following:

Lenovo M72e Tiny
Asus Eeebox 1033 or 1035

Anyone else have any rec's for small form factor PCs?

[Billy Welsh]

We just put in an Optiplex 7010 with a SSD.  Working very well so far.

[Jeff Golas]

Just an update - I went with the Lenovo M72e Tiny. I found a displayport to HDMI cable at PC Connection which worked and carried both video and audio without a hitch (the audio factor was up in the air with the Tinys based on previous reviews/posts).

Computer included the steel mounting bracket which I velcro'd to the back of the TVs in each meeting room using 3m Duallock, which if you don't know, is VERY VERY heavy duty velcro.

Added a usb to serial adapter which sends commands to the TV to turn on and switch to the proper input when the computer wakes up. (GPO settings will prevent computer from being shut down, reboot only) - I pushed a power plan to it to sleep after an hour, and the TV will automatically shut off after 10 min with no signal).

Last but not least - I need to sort out how to handle the use of the computer itself. My thoughts are to have an account, domain or local, auto login on startup so that the computer is ready to go for general web use. In order to use a GPO to control a lot of the aspects of the UI, it has to be a domain account. However, I don't want the auto-logged-in account to immediately be able to access network resources.

My possible solution is to have anyone use their own credentials and have a mandatory profile (so the users desktop icons and 10 tons of crap doesn't copy over), but then the computer won't be immediately available, and we do have a person who may need the computer without a login account. This is the PITA part.

Also added a Logitech 920 camera to each room as well. I would love to test a Skype session with someone if anyone has time.

[Jim Jensen]

Interesting notations about the velcro - will have to remember that - creative! Give me a try if you like - sent PM with skype info.