Media Server vs Media Servant

Prioritizing your entertainment providers

There is a proliferation of articles on the Internet advocating the use of your old cupboard-dwelling computer as a personal media server. The idea is that all of the songs and movies that you have been stealing over the years are centralised on an old computer that is left running all the time. You can then network all the other computers in your household to this server, which saves you from many arduous tasks - walking, waiting, reading a book, going outside etc. With free operating systems and applications like Xubuntu and MythTV, the whole project is extraordinarily cheap and easy nowadays.

But if reusing an old computer means leaving it turned on all day, everyday, running a media server, maybe it would be better left rotting in the cupboard.

Jeff Atwood wrote an article on how you can quickly calculate the cost of leaving a server running all day long, all year long. The article is a few years old now, but let's assume that your old computer and Jeff Atwood's calculations come from the same era (the roaring mid-2000s).

The good thing with converting electricity in kilowatts per hour to carbon dioxide emissions is that it's more straightforward than entire life-cycle calculations and there is plenty of data available on government websites.

My friends and I get our power from plants in Victoria, Australia, so I'll use the ratio of 1.444 kilograms of co² per kilowatt hour. This is actually quite high because Victoria uses smelly brown coal, instead of fancy black coal - so if you don't live in Victoria, give yourself a pat on the back and lower the number somewhat.

1.444 kg co² * (160 watts * (8760 hours per year)/1000) = 2.023 tonnes of co²

That's a lot of carbon dioxide. In fact that's equal to more carbon dioxide emissions per year than a Brazilian. Or more than six people from Kenya (according to the UN).

As an alternative to an electronic media server, why not offer valuable refugee employment and hire a sextet of African musicians to follow you around all day?

Good idea, but... though the average wage in Kenya is in the vicinity of $6 a day for workers in the personal services sector, once you bring them over to Australia they will be allowed to claim the minimum wage, which I believe is $13 an hour. Once they experience a 17-fold increase in income, they will certainly go out shopping for iPods, beef and beer, and before long they will join the rest of us in the over 20 tonnes per annum club.

Why would you want your own media server in the first place? Here are the reasons I could come up with:

1. Setting up a server is a good learning experience
2. You can listen to music and watch movies from any computer, Xbox, PlayStation etc. in your house
3. You are really super bored

Number one, I can't really disagree with although given the huge energy cost and significant monetary cost, I could think of some more efficient ways of educating yourself. A period of machine-abstinence is far more likely to render true wisdom, grasshopping friends.

Number two implies that you actually own such a vast quantity of entertainment machines that you are already sucking far too hard on the coal stacks and that you certainly don't need any more energy wasted in your house.

Number three... who gets bored anymore apart from mentally-unsound 10 year olds?

Here's some better ideas things to do with an old computer:

• Freecycle
• Turn it into a wall
• Play Geto Boyz and smash it up
• Turn it into a funky retro candelabra monstrosity with homosexual branches of spiraling circuitry, then donate it to some retrosexual laneway establishment with posters of Johnny Cash and Wladziu Valentino Liberace. Now utilize vile candelabra.