Bootable CD w/OS for firewall

[miah]

On Thu, Sep 16, 2004 at 07:33:13PM -0400, David Kramer wrote:
> For $300, though, you could pick up an old slow laptop and some PCMCIA 
> NICs. That would run cool and quiet, be small, and draw less power.  And if 
> you lost power, it would keep on running.  Make one of the cards WiFi and 
> you have an access point, too.

<rant>

I really wish laptop batteries didn't suck as much as they do.  Every
laptop that I've ever had that I've left plugged in for months at a
time has a battery failure.  If I'm never using the battery, but its
installed wtf is the battery going dead?  It seems to me like the
laptop doesn't detect 'battery full' condition too well and tries to
charge it constantly thus killing it off.  I'm no EE person though and
don't know how truthful that is.  

Nowadays I use my battery and once charged pull the plug.  I've
got over a year of life out of this battery, compared to a couple
months with my two previous laptops where I almost allways plugged it
in.

And seriously, $200 for a battery is insane, I really wish they'd
standardize on a form-factor or that non-vendor replacements were
actually cheaper.

</rant> 

-miah