Its an awesome demo, but if you pay your own electricity bill old hardware such as this just isn't practical. At least not in my country with our energy prices.
Not sure why this was downvoted as it's a valid issue. For the last 16 years I've used some kind of Mac hooked up to a stereo receiver as a media server and had a similar concern.
2002 - 2006 G4 tower
2006 - 2016 2006 Mac Mini
2016 - now 2012 Mac Mini
For music, the Mac Mini is used headless via screensharing. But it's set to never sleep because it sometimes doesn't wake up properly.
I'm always curious if an Apple TV would basically pay for itself over a few years with reduced power consumption vs having Mini with an 12TB external dual-drive running 24/7 (the drives do spin down on their own though).
edit: formatting
edit2: I did some rough math. Apple TV at idle (2w) vs 2012 Mac Mini at idle (11w) = 9w difference. At roughly $0.20/kWh the 32GB Apple TV 4k ($179) would pay for itself in just over 11 years.
Probably sooner because:
1. Electricity prices are likely to increase in the next decade.
2. Assuming the power usage difference is higher when actually playing/streaming music (given how bloated iTunes has become).
3. Even more power saved when streaming Netflix / Amazon Prime on Apple TV vs in Chrome on the Mac Mini (and up to 4k vs 720p on Chrome).
You're both right, but i see his/her point since I also have to pay my own electricity bill. A Raspberry Pi or similiar hardware will do this at an order of magnitude cheaper. Still, for romance reasons, I much prefer the solution in the article. Sometimes it's just worth the extra small bit of money for the romance
Ok, so I have always assumed that since a lot of this old hardware doesn't use anywhere near the level of cooling that a modern machine does, se/30 motherboard doesn't appear to bother with a CPU fan or heatsink, it uses a great deal less power. Am I incorrect in this, or is it all just the CRT?
Totally valid point and I agree. There's a lot of nostalgia around retro/vintage but the truth is technology has improved in so many ways over the years. But again nostalgia is more a sentimental thing and seeing a Spotify interface in grainy pixels really hits me in the feels.
