OSNews

It occurs to me that I have focused on one tree and momentarily forgotten about the forest. I would like to correct that because I feel that this is an important point that should not be allowed to fall through the cracks.

We have been arguing about the performance per kw in purely monetary terms: this month's electric bill. While it is true that this is what most businesses would be interested in, we should not forget that there are many other important reasons that a more energy efficient server is desirable.

Dependence upon foreign sources of fuel is something about which many of us are concerned. Conservation of remaining fuel reserves is also something which should be of concern. And whether one believes in global warming as a threat or not, few would take the position that burning fossil fuels is not damaging to the environment for reasons which go beyond the effects of greenhouse gasses.

For all of those reasons, the electric bill is only a small part of the actual cost of a less efficient server. In the long term, these are reasons which should be significant to the businesses in question. But even if they are not, we are all in this together. The next door neighbor who drives a needlessly inefficient SUV affects us all. Likewise, the business that uses less efficient servers affects us all.

I seem to have developed a bit of tunnel-vision earlier in this thread, which the above should rectify.