some ruminations on saving money, power, etc.

[Dan Ritter]

At home, I currently run:

- my main server
- my desktop, which never sleeps
- my wife's laptop, which never sleeps
- my laptop, which is almost always sleeping
- the Myth box, which doesn't sleep
- the kids' machine, which is off when they aren't using it

All of these run Linux, mostly Debian Lenny. It would be nice if
my desktop would sleep (it wakes up immediately, as far as I can
tell) and my wife's laptop would sleep (it does, but gets
unstable afterwards -- maybe this will improve in Squeeze).

The server can't and shouldn't sleep, but maybe I could replace
it with a lower-power part. Currently, it's an Athlon 3500
(single core) with 1.5GB RAM, a 2 disk RAID mirror and an
external USB disk for backup.

It looks like an Atom D510 is roughly comparable to the Athlon
in performance, and would reduce power usage about 50W, counting
the required new motherboard and RAM. 

On the other hand, that's about $150 in parts, and 50W * 24h *
30d *12m /1000 is 432KWh per year, which at 14c/KWh is $60. So
it would take over two years to repay. Meanwhile, there's no
obvious reason that the Athlon won't continue to function for
another year or two.

-- 
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You can't defend freedom by getting rid of it.