Although I have other laptops/desktops, I use Dell MINI 10 netbook as the primary source for my computer rig.
Why? ---> Silence. I like listening music deep into the night when the silence of the environment is pitch black.
Dell MINI 10 is fanless by design. Add a 128 GB SSD instead if the HDD it comes with and the only sounds you get from it are the electronic circuitry "talking". You can hear it whispering only if you put your ear next to the keyboard and listen carefully.
The only problem I have is that if I surf the web or use any other applications at the same time, it overheats.
But just for that I have a silent cooler - a cooling pad with crystals in it. These crystals melt at about 25-30 degrees celsius.
But if I use only Foobar (all other applications, including anti-virus are closed) it runs smooth for as many hours as you like.
One thing to take into consideration when choosing laptops/netbooks as source is the USB power supply. Some brands have more dirty 5V USB power supplies than others. (Read from a realiable source that Dell is more dirty than Toshiba for instance).
There is a simple solution to this, which I intend to apply shortly: if you use something like a modded M2Tech HiFace unit (which is fed by battery power and only uses the USB connection to get the information) you basically skip feeding power from the laptop/netbook.
If you do this, it won't matter how dirty the 5V USB power source is and basically a netbook will be just as good as the most expensive laptop/destop money can buy
Hope this info will be usefull to those who use computers as source for music. Don't forget to use a good DAC with the computer or almost everything else will be in vain...
