Do anybody know if it is possible to buy a headless computer and have it running Blender and then just stream to a laptop?
Or rendering using a server?
I example rendering with cycles on a netbook through a homecomputer over the internet?
I use my old Macbook pro (without Monitor - Headless, looks funny and is so light) as blender server/slave through vnc. Not usable (lag) to work in Blender remotely, but to make settings or render something it’s enough.
If you want to use vnc over the internet - i think you need vpn? (Not knowing that much about it, but vpn gives afaik acces to local network through internet?)
to access blender server remotely you don’t need vnc - but vpn.
Teamviewer is a great app for this type of work. I established this at my past work - a render mac pro students loged in and worked on via the Internet. Frame rate will be an issue to get smooth feedbacks but otherwise it works well.
I am very new to this idea
I am just trying to find out if it is possible to buy a cheaper headless machine instead of buying an expensive replacement for my (other than lousy GPU) fine laptop.
Your solution would maybe be a first step. Which VNC client do you use?
Of course can you just by a render cube. Put a good 3D card and CPU into it. You can access the computer at home via LAN / Ethernet and on the road via Internet. Of course LAN is much faster and will provide a smooth result. I personally use Teamviewer a lot as it is a great cross-platform VNC. You can even install it as a system service so it will always run in the background.
If you are on OS X you can however with Lion also use the build in VNC which works great as well.