I took out a G4 Mac mini out of the storage and thought about junking it. It has been in storage for over 5 years now. I googled, "What to do with an old G4 Mac mini" and found some surprising results. People are retiring them into low-powered servers.
I have the very first gen G4 with 1GB DDR RAM, 100 GB PATA drive. I also have a GPower USB/Firewire external matching enclosure hub.
The original 1.25 GHz PowerPC G4 first generation Mac mini consumes about 32-85W (Max). At idle, 32W is decent but not what I call low-power.
I found some people debating whether or not an ARM based lightweight device like a PogoPlug would compare. PogoPlugs run at 4-5W and can be hacked into full Linux servers running mySQL, web,FTP,rsync, miniDLNA, torrent boxes, Squeezebox music server, you name it.
They are often discounted at 15ドル-20.
I personally have 8 of these Pogos running various things. However, I also have a whole closet full of Firewire drives that could be put to good use and shared over the network. Hence, I thought of re-using the Mac Mini.
