Tagged green

Being cheap - Mac Mini part 2

I made a few calculations. I hope I did this right.

I am charged about 22 1/2 cents per kWh used. The PowerMac G5 averages about 0.2 kW of power. 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Ideally, I’d like the desktop to be on continuously. This is about $394 a year. The Mac Mini uses about 0.02 kW of power. This equates to about $39.42 a year. A final savings of about $355. That’s not bad. In just two years, I would have paid for my Mac Mini.

To put it another way, I was just talking to a friend who plays WoW. I’m just not really into video games. I have no idea why. Anyways, he said it costs $15 a month to play. I was shocked! That’s like getting 3 DVRs from your cable co, or getting 1/2 an unlimited text messaging for a family plan. So this is where my mindset is coming from. To run my PowerMac, it costs about $33 a month. The Mac Mini would only cost me only $3.25 a month!

I am so cheap!

Mac Mini

Mac MiniI currently own a PowerMac G5 DP 2.0ghz. It is so awesome!! That is…if this post was written sometime in 2003. Unfortunately it was written in 2008. The computer still performs great, the problem I have with it is the amount of power it uses. My handy dandy power calculator machine (Kill A Watt) shows that the PowerMac uses about 200 watts idle and about 300 watts full bore. The Mac Mini uses about 30 watts full bore! Benchmarks even show that the Mac Mini is faster. What’s especially funny is my PowerMac uses about 40 watts when it’s sleeping! I was wrong about this, it’s only about 10 watts.  In comparison, my electric heater uses about 1000 watts. I wonder how much savings I could get in a year from replacing my G5 with a Mac Mini? A few bucks? I’ll feel greener at the very least.