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Mac Mini Pays for Itself After 2 Years

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Re: Mac Mini Pays for Itself After 2 Years

#61

Post by greyboy »

borism wrote: post #60
electromagnetic wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your energy-star rated 20"+ screen (with an LCD backlight) typically consumes 20W when on and 0W when powered off by the computer. So I believe the Mini would consume, on average under use, about 55W, which is a rather commendable figure for an official desktop and not a nettop. Adding peripherals will obviously effect this, a portable hard drive can pull up to 18W (maxing out the USB power supply). I'd definitely sa…

I was wondering if the Mini 1TB with OS X Server is as usable and accessible to a new user as any standard OS X Yes, but: - Mini has 2.5" drives, so 1TB is not possible yet - Why would you use OS X Server? There's nothing in it that you need

I'm confused - or you are.

A new option is a Mac Mini with 2x 500GB drives (without an internal optical drive), running OS X Server, for $999.

http://www.apple.com/macmini/server/specs.html

Re: Mac Mini Pays for Itself After 2 Years

#62

Post by chadaustin »

staunch wrote: post #33
Periodic wrote: post #11

A few people are debating the numbers, but I think there's a much more important message here. Consumers rarely factor in the total cost of ownership (TCO) of a computer, and only look at the retail price. I used to think this way, particularly because I didn't have much money, so I needed to buy the cheapest computer I could at a given time, resulting in paying more over the lifetime of the computer (which might not…

Saving on power in the datacenter is one of the worst ways to try to save money, in my experience. It varies greatly, but $10 million dollars worth of servers, network gear, and storage might cost $25k/mo in power. Shaving 5% or 10% off that bill is practically meaningless. You can save a lot more money in other ways. Obviously at massive scale (think Google) it's a different story, but for the average small-medium c…

Our colo was built back when computing per watt took up a lot more space... meaning we had two racks of machines in a giant empty room and we'd already blown our power budget.

Power is often the constraining factor.

Re: Mac Mini Pays for Itself After 2 Years

#63

Post by GeneralMaximus »

Tichy wrote: post #59
chrisbolt wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Mac Mini is almost completely silent unless the CPU is being maxed for long enough (a few minutes), causing the fan to kick in.

No it isn't. I tried to use my PowerPC Mini as a homeserver, but my gf complained about the constant noise, so I had to switch it off. The fan is spinning continuously.

Wasn't the PPC notorious for running hot? My Intel Mac runs completely silent unless I'm building something from source.

(I have no experience with PPC Macs. Comment solely based on anecdotal evidence. Correct me if I'm wrong.)

Re: Mac Mini Pays for Itself After 2 Years

#64

Post by cschneid »

electromagnetic wrote: post #44
aaronblohowiak wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is the max. it actually slurps about 35W under load edit: and then you need a display of some kind ;)

Your energy-star rated 20"+ screen (with an LCD backlight) typically consumes 20W when on and 0W when powered off by the computer. So I believe the Mini would consume, on average under use, about 55W, which is a rather commendable figure for an official desktop and not a nettop. Adding peripherals will obviously effect this, a portable hard drive can pull up to 18W (maxing out the USB power supply). I'd definitely sa…

From my superficial experience with OSX Server, it's like Windows Server in the sense that it is OSX Plus. All the normal stuff is there, then server specific stuff is there. That includes both nice GUIs on top of open source stuff (Samba, etc), and nice GUIs on top of totally custom stuff (Calendar sharing, Wikis, etc).

If you have normal web-serving, open source using needs, regular OSX will be just fine. Be sure you really need server before buying, regular OSX can do any server type things that linux can.

Re: Mac Mini Pays for Itself After 2 Years

#65

Post by briansmith »

I'm not sure how they justify their claim that the Mac Mini is the most power efficient desktop. According to another post in this discussion, the average draw under load is approximately 35W. The Lenovo M58 & M58p--which have been out since December, 2008--also draws an average 35W under load, and are also EPEAT Gold and Energy Star 5.0 rated. I believe HP has had a similar product for a while too; probably every PC maker does.

Re: Mac Mini Pays for Itself After 2 Years

#66

Post by chaosmachine »

riobard wrote: post #47
aaronblohowiak wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

beagle board + ssd = really silent.

remember to check the LCD monitor for high frequency noise, too. recently i came across several samsung monitors with this issue :|

It seems to a be a quality control issue. We had 100s of the same model monitor where I used to work. Some of them had the high-frequency whine, some of them didn't.

Re: Mac Mini Pays for Itself After 2 Years

#67

Post by mbreese »

GeneralMaximus wrote: post #63
Tichy wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No it isn't. I tried to use my PowerPC Mini as a homeserver, but my gf complained about the constant noise, so I had to switch it off. The fan is spinning continuously.

Wasn't the PPC notorious for running hot? My Intel Mac runs completely silent unless I'm building something from source. (I have no experience with PPC Macs. Comment solely based on anecdotal evidence. Correct me if I'm wrong.)

G4 Powerbooks (PPC) were known to cause severe burns to people. So much so that Apple never called them laptops because you couldn't use them on your lap. (Granted, those people were wearing shorts and had the computer on bare skin, and the heat built up slowly so you didn't notice it).

Point being, the PPC Macs ran damn hot. My old G4 powerbook ran hotter than my current MacBook Pro. IIRC, notebook cooling and power requirements were the main reasons for the switch to Intel chips.

Re: Mac Mini Pays for Itself After 2 Years

#68

Post by mbreese »

electromagnetic wrote: post #44
aaronblohowiak wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is the max. it actually slurps about 35W under load edit: and then you need a display of some kind ;)

Your energy-star rated 20"+ screen (with an LCD backlight) typically consumes 20W when on and 0W when powered off by the computer. So I believe the Mini would consume, on average under use, about 55W, which is a rather commendable figure for an official desktop and not a nettop. Adding peripherals will obviously effect this, a portable hard drive can pull up to 18W (maxing out the USB power supply). I'd definitely sa…

We run a few Mac OS X Servers at work. Unfortunately, they are a few versions old (2 are Panther, 1 Tiger). They are probably closer to Windows Server 2008 than Ultimate editions of windows. But neither is probably a good comparison.

The core system is your standard Mac OS X. I feel odd when I log onto our servers and see an iTunes icon. So you won't miss anything by getting the Mac OSX Server.

The "server" part is more like having all of the capabilities of a Linux server, with a nice easy to use GUI to configure them. The newer versions include some Mac specific services, but for the most part, it's like having a Linux server and a Mac Desktop in one package.

I think the main benefit is licensing... with the "normal" version I think you are restricted as to how many people can connect (10?). But the server version is unlimited. This probably doesn't matter to you, but the Mini server would be nice for a department file server, or something like that.

If I were getting a Mini, I'd get the Server one just for the hard drives. Don't let the "server" part discourage you... it's still a Mac.

Re: Mac Mini Pays for Itself After 2 Years

#69

Post by gonzo »

bjelkeman-again wrote: post #43
bemmu wrote: post #29

Where is the wasted energy lost to? If it is lost to heat and you have electric heating in your house, would that lead to a correspondingly lowered heating bill?

Yes, but you really don't want to heat your house or your hot water with straight electric radiators or water heaters. Use a heat pump. A heat pump will give you a 30-40% lower electricity bill. I have a heat pump which takes heat from the ground (two boreholes) and for every 1kWh of electricity I put into it I get 2.5-3 kWh equivalent of heating in my house. This is essentially stored solar heat in the ground which…

I was born and raised in Las Vegas, NV. So was my father. His father started a water well drilling business in 1953, my father joined him in that business (post collage) in 1957.

In 1980, my father decided to build a house. We (meaning I) was sent to the property in order to drill two 800 foot deep 'wells', which were subsequently cased with 8" (ID) steel pipe, but not perforated. (There was a 1/2" plate on the bottom of the casing.)

After this, we filled the casing with water. (A fine test of one's skill at welding.) Then added a 2" galvanized "loop" inside the casing, which was then hooked in to a heat pump.

It was the single-most efficient "single family residence" HVAC system in the state.

We subsequently added hot-water recapture to the indoor AC units, in order to make the most of the heat "pulled" out of the house.

Dad also built the house with R-44 insulation in the walls, R-60 or so in the attic, and a white 'Spanish tile' roof.

The result, a power bill of around $100/mo for a 5000 sq ft home in the desert that was numbingly cold in the summer, and pleasantly warm in the winter. (It does get cold in LV.)

It helped that 40% of the square footage was basement (something else nobody in Las Vegas has, because it turns hard about 4 feet down.)

Re: Mac Mini Pays for Itself After 2 Years

#70

Post by gonzo »

aidenn0 wrote: post #50

I have a similar experience. I got used to having a linux server on 24/7 when I was in college (no electricity bill in the dorms). I moved to California when I graduated, and was spending over $40/month on electricity. I borrowed a friends kill-a-watt and measured my server at 180W-220W depending on the load! I put together a machine based around the Via C7 and measured it as using 18W at the outlet. The whole thing…

I've got an Atom-powered rackmount firewall (http://www.netgate.com/product_info.php?cPath=60_107&pro...), a fanless rackmount HP ProCurve GigE switch, and a 2009 series Mac Mini running the home/business network. The rest is done with notebooks.
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