I thought this video was rather interesting, because at 12:27, the presenter crunches the numbers to find out how many years it would take for a new computer purchase to be more environmentally friendly (in regards to total CO2 expended) compared to using a less efficient used model.
Depending on the specific use case, it could take as little as 3 years to breakeven in terms of CO2 if both systems were at max power draw forever, and as long as 30 if the systems are mostly at idle.
I use a 2011 ThinkPad X120e as an FTP/Syncthing server. It was underpowered as a laptop from day one, but still works fine as a lightweight server. The best thing about ThinkPads is that TLP allows you to set min/max charging thresholds, so that you can keep an old battery in good shape for … well, I’ll let you know. This one’s 14 years old and still has a four-hour run time.
One thing I’d like to try is “Wake My Potato” for shutdown / automatic restart when a power outage occurs.
Links:
TLP - https://linrunner.de/tlp/index.html
Wake My Potato - https://github.com/pablogila/WakeMyPotato
@BackYardIncendiary @ProdigalFrog If you have an old latitude, newer kernels also allow you to set min/max charging thresholds. My syncthing server (and NAS and a few other things) is an old 2013/2014 dell latitude e7240. It’s not the original battery, but I do keep it in decent shape via charging thresholds.