** Stephen Davies <stephen.davies@???> [2008-05-20 15:02]:
> Thanks for your observations. I'm sure there is a bit of Parkinson Law
> in effect here.
> But for this very reason, I'm now using MAC Mini's for my 'always on'
> systems. I'm not sure what the total power drain of my three is but I'm
> pretty sure it is far less than my main Dev Server ( Quad Core, 8Gb etc)
> that I use when I work from home (90% of the time)
> It might be that the reduction in CO2 emissions I make from less driving
> is more than that generated from the Electricity that I use. Those would
> make some interesting calculations.
Indeed. As with many things if you really delve into things you can get
really lost just identifying all the variables necessary to get a truly
accurate picture. Much like bio fuels being farmed in environmentally
damaging ways as farmers tear down forests to plant the crops, and the
relative cost and environmental impact on importing a hybrid car as
opposed to using a standard vehicle built in this country by the same
manufacturer. We have a long way to go yet, but it is a start.
> Back to the MAC Mini.
> These are wonderful little devices. Almost totally silent in operation.
> No loud fans running.
> I just got a second PPC one off EBay for 110GPB. 1Gb Ram, 80Gb HDD.
> It is now running Fedora 9 and service the Picture callery for the
> Camera Club. The others are running Fedora 8 (PPC) & Centos 5.1 (Intel).
> The Intel one is also running two VMware Systems. One for Email and the
> other for Bugzilla, SVN, Dev Wiki etc.
That sounds like a mighty good price for a Mac Mini. I've been on the
lookout for a B&W G3 or better for some time so I can take a proper look
at OSX, and every now and then I check eBay for prices on the late G3
and early G4 Macs and Mac Minis. I don't recall seeing the Minis going
for significantly under a couple of hundred, although it clearly depends
on what is bundled with them. Worth looking out for, although they
wouldn't handle my standard RAID mirror setup as a second drive would
have to be added via Firewire or USB.
I'm getting quite interested in the idea of one of these Mini-ITX boards
though. I can use a riser card to fit one of my existing PCI ATA cards
to run my HDs from, and have my DVD-RW/RAM drive hanging off the
motherboard IDE, with room for expansion to SATA as drives get replaced
(assuming that is before the motherboard is upgraded!). It's a shame I
can't use my existing Thermaltake PSUs, but that is down to the cases I
have, so it may come down to a battle between nice HD caddies in the
rack cases vs my nice PSUs in another case (likely one of my various ATX
ones).
Isn't upgrading kit wonderful! I haven't even started provisioning for
my Asterisk box yet!
** end quote [Stephen Davies]
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