-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 This whole rolling-blackout thing inspires me to ask: anybody tried using laptops as servers for core functions? I'm thinking infrastructure stuff like DNS and DHCP and Radius and so on, maybe backup SMTP, whatever else can be shoehorned into it. Who knows, maybe even Zebra one of these days. Logging servers. Firewalls. Sure, if a server job absolutely requires a big farm of fast disks spread over a bunch of controllers, there's no point in looking at a laptop. But many server jobs don't. Enough to maybe make some blackouts hurt less? I'd _Sure_ rather provision UPS support for a rack full o' laptops than an equivalent amount of compute horses provisioned with traditional rackmount server gear. They've got their own internal UPS, making 'em insensitive to switchover blips, and their running load is way less than normal server. 'Specially when their little lids are closed and their backlights and LCD drivers are all asleep:-). Seems like it might even be worthwhile investigating the possibility of running 'em directly off e.g. 12VDC; I wouldn't be surprised if the standard power supplies for use in cars didn't end up being more efficient (spending less watts in the conversion) than the wall warts. Hearing about the Google farm made me think, you know, it might be slicker to tuck 4 or maybe even 8 laptops into a U than just a pair of shallow rackmount servers. But then I'm weird:-). - -Bennett -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.0.0 (GNU/Linux) Comment: For info see http://www.gnupg.org iD8DBQE5SEWUL6KAps40sTYRAnjVAJ4qFNB6CKSujOD0id5NgoxEzFpGtgCgg4XS T6KK6V/pq6I1+WP08hWAeII= =tykJ -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----