Peter Jason wrote:

>
> Thanks, but on reflection I'll go for an el-cheapo laptop. I just
> need something to download from the internet items that might contain
> viruses. Just the other day one actually turned off my firewall and
> I had to do a system restore to get it back!

They make "appliances" for downloading. The trick is to find
a good search term for them.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/ZyXEL-NSA-21.../dp/B0030YC2Y0

That one is a NAS Appliance, which runs Linux inside. You add your own
disk drive. There is a one bay and a two bay version. The idea would be,
it dispenses with LCD monitor, keyboard/mouse, and connects to your
network, and you use things like a web browser to drive it.

Since the manuals are a few years old, I'm guessing this one is near
end-of-life. But this illustrates the idea at least.

http://us.zyxel.com/Products/Details...E-AF05A93B2F92

ftp://ftp2.zyxel.com/NSA210/user_gui...0_3.20_ed2.pdf

There is a review here of a two bay version, but I like the look
of the one bay device, as it's a bit smaller. The one bay device
would likely use 7W less electricity, by not having the second
drive.

http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/content/view/30323/75/

It has roughly the same circuitry as a home router, but probably
uses a bit more power, because it has to power one or more SATA
drives.

http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/image...rd.jpg_425.jpg

"ZyXEL is using the Marvell 88F5182 Orion processor at 500 MHz,
there is 128MB of RAM and 16MB of flash."

And with those facilities, it runs some kind of Linux.

Paul