Tech Forum

At our last webcast for stake conference we used some personal laptops at the receiving buildings and ran into an issue at one of the buildings where the laptop (company laptop) started it's weekly anti-virus scan at the same time the conference started and it brought the system to it's knees. The user did not have permission to stop or pause the scan.

The only back up option I had at the moment was my personal netbook computer (Asus EeePC Atom N270) -- I quickly swapped it in and it played the whole webcast without any issues. At the time, I was concerned that the CPU wouldn't be powerful enough, but it worked great.

Now I'm considering buying a netbook computer to put in the kit for each of our buildings to use for a receiving the webcast. I trying to decide if the Atom processor based systems will continue to be sufficient or if I'm better off considering a system (laptop, or small desktop) with a dual core CPU (i.e. Core2Duo, Athlon, etc.)

I'm looking for any input on what has worked for other stakes when purchasing webcast receivers as alternatives to the official webcast receiver box.

I've read complaints that the Atom processors are quite stripped down, maybe more so than they should be. However, I will say that there are many netbooks starting to come out with processors with the double the power and resources of the Atom processors (some of the Celeron mobile lines). I have even seen some great deals on netbooks with dual core processors for under $500.

Just a thought when considering your hardware needs and requirements compared to budget allowances.

I think I'd check the CPU utilization during a conference. Keep in mind that a new Codec could be more demanding. The Atom is on the low end of the scale, so it might be worth upgrading the CPU and slacking on something not important in this application.