Mac Mini Pays for Itself After 2 Years • Hacker News Board

Re: Mac Mini Pays for Itself After 2 Years

#71

Post by borism » Tue, Oct 27, 2009, 1:30 PM UTC

greyboy wrote: post #61

borism wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Fair enough, but if you still want to use it as a server (btw, why?) you'll probably make RAID 1 from them, so it'll still be 500gb max.

Re: Mac Mini Pays for Itself After 2 Years

#72

Post by byoung2 » Tue, Oct 27, 2009, 4:56 PM UTC

tedunangst wrote: post #48

byoung2 wrote: post #2

He might have saved even more electricity had he gotten a laptop with the same specs as the mini. My Dell Inspiron 1525 has a 65W power supply, vs the similarly-equipped Mac Mini's 110W, and that 65W includes the screen. Adding an LCD to the Mac Mini adds another 30-50W.

They don't make laptops with 42" screens, which is what he has attached to the mini.

You could just as easily connect a 42" screen to the laptop, as I sometimes do. My laptop has an HDMI out

Re: Mac Mini Pays for Itself After 2 Years

#73

Post by byoung2 » Tue, Oct 27, 2009, 4:59 PM UTC

tedunangst wrote: post #48

byoung2 wrote: post #2

He might have saved even more electricity had he gotten a laptop with the same specs as the mini. My Dell Inspiron 1525 has a 65W power supply, vs the similarly-equipped Mac Mini's 110W, and that 65W includes the screen. Adding an LCD to the Mac Mini adds another 30-50W.

They don't make laptops with 42" screens, which is what he has attached to the mini.

You could just as easily connect a 42" screen to the laptop, as I sometimes do using my laptop's HDMI out. It will still end up using less power than the Mac Mini.

Re: Mac Mini Pays for Itself After 2 Years

#74

Post by sahaj » Tue, Oct 27, 2009, 6:26 PM UTC

Tichy wrote: post #58

Oh come on... Computers get more efficient all the time. My last power hungry desktop was replaced with a mobile ultra low voltage CPU notebook. Guess it paid for itself, too. But it wasn't from Apple, so I didn't make a fuss about it. You know what, since you are so good at maths, I could sell you my old car for 10000 bucks. That way you would save 20000 bucks because you would not have to buy a more expensive car i…

fanman?

Re: Mac Mini Pays for Itself After 2 Years

#75

Post by elblanco » Tue, Oct 27, 2009, 10:56 PM UTC

Tichy wrote: post #58

Oh come on... Computers get more efficient all the time. My last power hungry desktop was replaced with a mobile ultra low voltage CPU notebook. Guess it paid for itself, too. But it wasn't from Apple, so I didn't make a fuss about it. You know what, since you are so good at maths, I could sell you my old car for 10000 bucks. That way you would save 20000 bucks because you would not have to buy a more expensive car i…

Whenever Apple takes a crap, fanboys flock to the stall to comment about how smart the smell is, and how stylish the toilet paper is. How only Apple could produce turds of such quality because they really, you know, think about what goes into the process and their specially formulated fiber diet is a totally unique combination of oats and bran that you simply can't replicate in the Windows or Linux world. So you have to pay 3x the price for that formulation.

And then blogs are filled with how it's all just so totally brilliant.

Re: Mac Mini Pays for Itself After 2 Years

#76

Post by elblanco » Tue, Oct 27, 2009, 11:11 PM UTC

mcantelon wrote: post #32

My guess is something Atom-based, like the EEE Box, would save even more in electricity.

Correct, they use about 50% less power, plus it costs less to purchase to start with.

Re: Mac Mini Pays for Itself After 2 Years

#77

Post by swernli » Wed, Oct 28, 2009, 9:30 PM UTC

staunch wrote: post #46

swernli wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I agree that for those numbers, 5% to 10% savings isn't worth the effort, this isn't a good reason to dismiss saving by reducing data center power. Nissan recently starting rolling out virtualization solutions for some of their datacenters, resulting in 34% energy savings. For the kind of numbers you list, that would end up being over $100k of savings a year.

I found the press release you were referencing: http://www.informationweek.com/news/software/server_virtuali... It proves exactly my point: That focusing on power usage is backwards. You should worry about other stuff, like using less servers. The guy that worries about using less servers can consolidate 159 servers to 28. He saves $5 million dollars and $10k/mo. The guy that worries about power usage itself just buy…

Ah, now I understand the distinction you are making. And I agree; get fewer servers, not the same number of slightly more efficient ones, and then you can talk about saving money on power.