PC/Duet set up

drdes

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I am currently contemplating which route to take for my music streaming.

I was originally going to go for a Tranquil T7 bit have hit problems with supplier, so am nor investigating the PC route again.

I understand the biggest disadvantage with the PC solution is the power consumption if you leave it on all the time. What happens to this power consumption if it is in “sleep” mode. I wanted to understand how the setup would work with a PC. I expect to do the following:

Living room – this is where the Squeezebox duet will sit which will be connected to amp and squeezebox will be connected wirelessly to router.

My laptop will be sitting all on its own upstairs somewhere. It will be connected to the broadband network wirelessly.

So two questios:

- if I leave the laptop on 24/7, it will go to “sleep” mode when not in use. In that case, if I am downstairs and select a song to play via the Duet, will the pc automatically “Wake up” or do I need to go upstairs and awaken it?
- Am I right that in the above set up I don’t need to connect anything via Ethernet (I have wireless broadband in the house) - so the location of my router is irrelevant (assuming the wireless signal passes to all components)??


Thanks
 
Providing your PC/Laptop supports WOL (Wake On LAN), which the vast majority do, the Squeezebox will send a wake packet (often referred to as a 'magic packet') which will bring the PC out of sleep mode.

It's great, my old Vista beast will wake from sleep in about 2-3 seconds when i press power/play on any of my Squeezebox's. When my PC is sleeping, it uses about 2 WAT's of power - less than most TV's in standby and many 'always on' NAS's.

Squeezecenter will prevent the PC from sleeping while the Squeezebox is in use. The PC will then go back to sleep after a period (set by you) of inactivity.

However, there is a snag - the PC/Laptop/server must be wired to the router for WOL to work. Everything else, Squeezbox's etc, can be wireless - but the server has to be connected with ethernet cable.
 
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Your email was great until the last paragraph:(

I presume I can get round the wired issue by using a davolo extender (or the like!).

Also, can anyone suggets best place to biuy a cheap laptop with 500G of memory. What should i be looking for specwise in terms of the usage which will be just to play music via squeeze box (and maybe movies at a later date)
 

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