I don’t know how this one slipped by me, so apologies that I’m late to the party on reporting this one, but better late than never.

The Xcore86 is an amazing little board because the entire computer is embedded within it. And one of the best features it’s that since it only uses 1.2 watts, it can run without fans.

Even better is that a netbook with this board can be configured to run on 8 AA NiMH batteries for a full 4 hours! And no power brick, just a cord! Amazing? You bet.

And I thought Mini ITX and Nano ITX was cool.. ha! This is better.

See video for yourself. It’s rather amazing. Make sure to watch it all the way thru – it’s totally worth your time.

After checking out the video, does this interest you? Would you buy one?

We recently had a laptop battery go dead (well, it wouldn’t hold a charge for over 10 minutes) on us and needed a replacement. The laptop (a Dell), itself is about 3 year old but running like a champ (knock on wood). So we call up Dell and find out the battery will cost over $300 and wouldn’t ship for over a month… seriously.

No thanks we said and went over to eBay and found the exact same part number, brand new, for $80. We placed the order and the part shipped the next day. A 375+% savings isn’t bad at all.

So the next time you need a part for something off-warranty, consider eBay. There are tons of surplus resellers which are running constant “Buy It Now” auctions so you can get exactly what you need.

If you like to make use solely of wireless devices, be sure to keep corresponding wired devices around in case of an emergency. I had a user last week who relies entirely on wireless devices about to give a demo when, of course, their batteries died. In true “if it can go wrong, it will go wrong fashion”, they didn’t have any batteries, so I had to give them my (always reliable) wired devices in order for the demo to be completed.

Personally, I don’t use wireless devices because I don’t want to have to worry about keeping batteries around. Not only are they an unnecessary cost, but wireless devices save little (if any) clutter and just introduce one more way for Murphy’s Law to get you. Of course to each their own…