[LINK] Green is not always good...

[Marghanita da Cruz]

Howard Lowndes wrote:
> ...especially when you are trying to put together competitive hardware 
> prices.
> 
> A few of you may know that I have been looking at thin clients without 
> disk drives and I looked at the option of buying special purpose units 
> off the shelf or building comparable from components and the difference 
> is about $100 per unit in favour of the latter.
> 
> The downside is that off the shelf consumes probably around 10-15 watts 
> whereas a standard small case with PSU is around 300 watts (not that is 
> necessarily the actual consumption when it's not driving disks).
> 
> So it looks like I may have to ask the customer to pay a premium to Go 
> Green.  :(
> 
> Back of the Envelope
> --------------------
> 
> Say a bought unit consumes 15W as against a built unit consuming 115W, 
> then at the current power cost of around 20 c/kWh (from my last bill) 
> the saving is 2 c/h resulting in a break even time for the customer, 
> against the extra capital outlay, of 5,000 hours on each thin client. 
> Let's assume that these thin clients run for 5 hours per day for 200 
> days per year, then the customer is not going to see the break even 
> until the thin clients are 5 years old.
> 
> The figures look a bit disappointing...
> 

At present, green power is at a premium, though it should be the other way round.

So, perhaps you could check the green vs ordinary power source.

Check with your electricity company on the "green" option.

Have you checked out the thinlinx stuff?
http://www.thinlinx.com.au

Marghanita



-- 
Marghanita da Cruz
http://www.ramin.com.au
Phone: (+61)0414 869202