T7 Case Study - February 2008

The ever increasing demand for interactive user information is putting previously non IT companies right into the world of technology.
Recently Tranquil PC were approached by the Imperial War Museum, and asked to investigate the provision of multiple PC’s to drive education terminals for the museum.  The PCs had to be reasonably powerful , and able to run multimedia applications, including Flash, Windows Media playback etc.  But they had to be small, near silent, and very reliable.  Other considerations were running costs and recyclability at the end of service life.

After some discussions, it was agreed to look at the T7 PC powered by the Intel Core CPU.  The T7 met every requirement, and as it was able to be ‘bridged’ the installations would be neat too.

Shortly after the initial meetings a first site was installed with seven T7 PCs in a bridged format.  The overall power consumption of the seven units, was measured at 202W – staggering when you consider these units were supporting modern multimedia information / entertainment systems.   Some single desk top PCs will draw 200W !

The consoles, arranged on cool blue cabinets, with integrated heavy duty stainless steel keyboards / tracker balls, appeared inviting and allowed multiple on lookers to gaze at the information on the glass fronted 17” panels.
Being very bright and open certainly was nice in the Museum.

The seven T7 PCs were located in s small side cabinet, along with various other devices. 
The pictures taken here were before the final ‘tidy up’ but the seven T7 PCs can clearly be seen on the lower shelf.
Even in the closed cabinet the tiny T7 PCs operated well, with generating hardly any back ground noise.

Here the T7 bridges can clearly be seen.  The T7 has special corners, which allow them to be mounted in numerous environments, including wall mounting etc.
Here the bridges are fitted to the lower edges, effectively creating ‘one single device.  In addition to helping security concerns this system also provides a solution to ensure the small PCs all stay in place.

When compared to a suitable PC to deliver the multimedia content, each T7 will be saving the Museum approximately £40.00 / annum – and in this installation this equates to almost £300.00 / annum.  The planned installation life of the units is 5 years – this totals an electricity saving alone of approximately £1500.00⁽¹⁾

We would like to thank the staff at the Imperial War Museum for permission to publish this case study, and for displaying the photographs.

Note 1   Data calculated based on comparison to a 100W desktop, running 7 days / week – 10 hours / day @ £0.145 / kWh