Kurobox - Linux Network Appliance

Unlike the small footprint devices based on Linksys-type systems, a Japanese company has been making and selling a small PowerPC Linux system for quite a while: http://www.kurobox.com/index.htm. The Kurobox needs a hard drive, but only takes 17 watts and has better stats than my current webserver.

There are a number of ported or port projects for distros. And the LSF has a Howto (http://linuxfromscratch.org/pipermail/hints/2003-March/001582.html) for rolling your own.

You can run your own network lab:

1. couple of these
   a terminal concentrator
   one managed switch / router appliance
   el cheapo UPS
   HD enclosure(s) to turn one into a SAN or fileserver.
   [/list:u]
   
   I bet a cluster of these could make a reasonable HA solution for a SOHO environment. And while they might be quiet, any 750Gb HD you hook up would be like a jet engine attached to a pillow-wrapped mime.
   
   Obviously, your server and applications would need to support PowerPC (or qemu emulation of an i386.)