5 Aug
2006
5 Aug
'06
3:57 p.m.
On 8/5/2006 at 3:14 PM Don Y wrote:
But they all require maintenance. :> I can live
without
that level of connectivity for the time/effort it saves me!
(If I need to move files in/out I FTP them to/from the
laptop and let the laptop deal with actually getting them
in/out).
I must be be uncommonly lucky, then. I've not done a thing to my server
for several years, except change the mail relay address when I changed
hosting services. (It was just a name change--a quick edit). If I hear
the BBC on the radio when I wake up in the morning, I know that
everything's working.
We don't get many power failures here (the substation is just about 1/2 mi
down the road), but when we do, they're doozies lasting a day or more.
I've got a big old Elgar UPS that the server's hung off of, with 4
deep-cycle marine batteries. It'll run the server for a few hours until I
bestir myself and fire up the generator, which I need to do anyway if I
want to use water (well) and eat food (refrigerator).
OTOH, I don't know what sort of backup the telco "temple" has that's
located on the southwest corner of my property. They've got a power line
drop there, but I don't know if they've got backup. Supposedly, the setup
has something like a 10,000 POTS pair capacity (that's what a lineman told
me), so one would hope for some sort of second power source for the DSL
connections.
Cheers,
Chuck
.
<shrug> I guess it depends on where you want to
spend your
time. I use my machines mainly for "doing work" (CAD, EDA,
software design, etc.) so I don't want to have to spend much
time working *on* them (just like a carpenter doesn't want
to have to "service" his hammer regularly :-/ )
Well, "kinda" (but not really). Depends on your ambient
conditions, etc. But there is no doubt that replacing a
nice little LX or Classic with a dual Piii is a non-starter
(given the uses I put it to).
I had
inherited three Dell Precision 410MT's (dual Piii/600's)
and thought of replacing the LX and Classic that serve as my
routers with them. But, the size (tower-ish) and power
(not just $$$ but BTU's as well -- this is AZ so we don't
need any extra heat even in Winter!) differences between them
and the cute little SPARC boxes made this a no-brainer
decision. (I kept one of the Dells and donated the other
two to a local charity. In hindsight, perhaps I should
have lifted the memory out of them and flushed-up the one
that I kept :< )
Yup, for every watt of CPU power, you need another watt (or is it more?) to cool it. RAM is cheap these days, ~$100=1GB.
So don't fret over the
memory. There are machines I rarely power on at home for the same
reason. They're too expensive to run, so I only power them when I need
to.
Exactly. I tossed my last Proliant 5500R (?) for exactly
that reason. And the fan noise. :-(
I think the next time I get my hands on a group of laptops,
I'll probably invest the time setting them up for these jobs
so I can just toss them in a desk drawer when not in use
AND can live without all the excess BTU's! (a big win
switching to a laptop for email, etc. since I no longer
have to power up a big monitor just to read mail!)