Power management (was: best office/home office setup)

[Alan Johnson]

On Sat, Jul 25, 2009 at 1:36 AM, Drew Van Zandt<drew.vanzandt at gmail.com> wrote:
> It's a fairly high-power machine; however, it is in regular use by upwards
> of a dozen people, though only I use it as a desktop (and that is a
> concession to waste-avoidance; servers should not ordinarily have desktop
> software running on them).  When it's possible to have 3 TB of RAID storage
> in my laptop, perhaps this will change, but I expect that by then I will
> have outgrown the current RAID.

Nope, "server in regular use by multiple people" is good enough for
me.  I'll call of the green police! ;p  In fact, kudos for using it as
your desktop as well!  All that said, I doubt our typical telecommuter
could justify leaving a machine on in this way, so in that context...
but this is not that context.

> In 3 years or so it might be worth replacing it with a nettop and a couple
> of large external drives, but at the moment a desktop with internal drives
> is the only sensible way to maintain that much storage in a live state.

Maybe, but remember that getting new stuff has a significant impact as
well.  It often takes a really bad machine and heavy use to justify
getting new gear for environmental reasons.  Being that this machine
is on all the time, maybe sooner rather than later.

Of course, if one has other reasons to get new gear, green green
green.  When you get there, think about SSD and/or external
USB/Firewire/eSATA disk on a Linux RAID/LVM/ZFS hanging off a
low-power appliancish Linux box for anything that need to be left on
all the time.  Again, not knowing the full details of your usage, this
might not make sense, but for the typical home sysadmin/geek, it does.
 Again, I also like the idea of being able to use it as a workstation,
so perhaps something a little beefier and some dumb terminals for that
instant-on that we been so spoiled with.

> I *use* my hardware regardless of its proximity to my current location; for
> those who do not, perhaps shutting it off makes sense.
>
> Also, with a comment like that you had *better* own a Prius.  ;-)

I wish!  I've been drooling over them for years.  They are such nice
cars even putting aside the millage, but again, buying new has it's
impact, and with cars, it is huge.  With my 2001 Saturn SL2 still
getting north of 42mpg on the highway (with heavy city driving, I
might see as low as 35Mpg from a tank), I just can't bring myself to
do it rationally.  Now, if I could just talk my wife into trading in
the 2003 Outback... but she keeps talking about a minivan which is the
wrong direction in my book when you only have 2 kids to transport.  Of
course, she keeps talking about a 3rd kid... AAAAAAAHHHHHH!  Kids.
Now there's a big impact!  ;-)  Oh, for a hybrid minivan.  It really
is the perfect car for the technology: more weight and typically more
city driving which makes the most of regenerative breaking.

Anyway, to be fair, our Outback got 29Mpg on a tank during our last
visit to the in-laws, which is about 50/50
interstate-highway/mountain-roads.  Not bad for a 2003 with all-wheel
drive (which also provides sanity in Wilder, Vermont winters: if you
have never gone grocery shopping with a family of 4 in a blizzard, you
have not lived), loaded with a family of 4 and all their
week-long-trip junk.  I expect it is getting well north of 30Mpg when
I'm behind the wheel on the highway crawling along at 100km/h (~62
Mph).  So again, we come back to the new car means virgin resources
issue.

But again, if I'm buying new?  Yes, Prius, Prius, Prius.  Unless I can
find a way to afford a Tesla Model S... (http://www.teslamotors.com/).
 Maybe by the time they start delivering in 2012, I could round up the
$50K (minus intensives and rebates).   It just might happen if my wife
does not trick me into a 3rd kid by then. ;-)

For now, my dream is to build a tiny one-seater car with electric bike
parts and my neighbor's welding skills.  If I could get 40Mph, and
20mi/charge, it would be the perfect car for my commute.  That's a big
project though, and I've got bigger fish to fry with my home's propane
use first.

-- 
Alan Johnson
alan at datdec.com