To get under my energy target, I’ve got to swap a 60 watt, 6 year old Sparc based SunBlade 150 with something that uses somewhere between 5 and 15 watts. Worst case energy-wise would be a netbook running Solaris, best case would be an ARM based micro server. A netbook running Solaris would use more power, but it would have more CPU and memory, ZFS, and a built in UPS. Storage would have to be USB powered notebook drives rather than 3.5” desktop drives. My total storage needs are under 250GB, so a pair of redundant USB powered notebook drives are adequate. (Transferring long term storage to DVD’s reduces its energy cost to zero, so as they fill up, I either delete or transfer.)
For user devices, low power laptops with generous use of power saving features should keep me near the 20-watt target. My XP and Vista computers don’t sleep or hibernate reliably, so they tend to be running most of the time. Windows 7 and OSX sleep and hibernate reliably, so devices with those OS’s are set for maximum power savings even when plugged in. Switching the XP and Vista notebooks to W7 will allow me to use aggressive power saving settings and reduce their energy footprint.
Power measurements at my breaker box show about a 300 watt parasitic draw when there are no lights, refrigerators or other appliances running. I can account for 150 watts as computer related. Someday I’ll have to track down the other 150 watts.
As home lighting moves from 60 watts per device to 13 watts per device, so should home computing.
Inspired by this discussion.
…every geek seems to need to one-up those around them and somehow differentiate and prove their geekdom... this is done in one of two ways:
- More is More: These are the guys with a deep wallet that always have the fastest processors, biggest screens, flashy furniture, etc.
- Less is More: The geek who does the most with the least (and generally brags about it). The more obscure your setup the better.
