Coming from the world of embedded devices, VIA has become an important contender on the front to power low consumption computers that are fit for the education market.

In particular, its VIA C7 1 GHz processor, drawing a maximum of 9 watts, and an average of less that 1 Watt, allows fanless solutions that are well fit for usage in classrooms, with sufficient speed to run Linux or Windows XP without any problems.

We have been using computers based on C3 (800 MHz), C7-D (1.5 GHz) and Eden (1.2 GHz) processors in our classrooms, teaching on both Linux and Windows, and the results are more than sufficient.

We did have some problems installing SuSE 10.2 on the C3 boards, but we know that we can get around them doing some digging into it (SuSe 10.1 worked quite well).

We even tested a Zombu, and installed SuSE 10.2 on it. We stil need to do some research on the drivers (the wrong drivers crash the system), but the installation was successuful. We installed it by creating a complete Linux system in its solid state card (using another computer), and then inserting it in the Zombu... and it worked (after a few trials).

The November issue of the VIA newsletter featured their VM 7700 LCD-Monitor-back PC, a really flat fanless PC based on either the VIA C7 1 GHz or the VIA Eden ULV 1.5 GHz. It can be screwed at the back of any standard LCD monitor.

The Newsletter also mentioned the new VIA EPIA SN-Series Mini-ITX Mainboard, which seems like a good candidate for classroom PCs or servers.

For some information of low power computer, you might want to look at this document.