Saturday, October 4, 2008

The office is quiet


For the first time in a decade, I am serverless at home.

A couple of weeks ago, we went over the budget, to see what we could cut. We're going to start looking at fluorescent PAR-30 lights for the downstairs, and we thought about turning off the phone and DSL to switch to cable. The one problem with this was that I had all my mail, this blog, etc. going to a server plugged in under my desk. A server that desperately needed both software and hardware upgrades (it is 4+ years old and was running a beta version of NetBSD). As best I could tell, I was spending almost $20 a month just powering the big rack-mount server.

That's when The Plan™ came together. I would move all of the home services to Google Apps. This blog moved to Blogger, mail went over to Gmail, and the web sites moved to Google Sites. Why should I spend valuable home time maintaining web pages when Google is happy to do so for free, or for $50 a year per mailbox if I end up needing more space.

We ended up keeping the phone line because the Cable Modem + Dish* isn't that much cheaper than Phone + DSL + ISP + Dish. Turning off the unneeded PCs will pay for that difference.

Now, I just have to get off Yahoo Domains. They've raised my domain costs to $35/year. Anyone know a decent cheap domain registrar (and no, I won't use GoDaddy. They're notorious for kidnapping domains for the flimsiest of excuses).


*For the channels we like, Dish's 250 channel plan (with Windstream discounts) is much cheaper than Insight's equivalent services.

3 comments:

Angela Belt-Newcom said...

I have been with GoDaddy for years and have never had any trouble out of them. They always send me four to five emails, starting at least three months before my domain expires, to remind me to renew. Now, I wouldn't recommend them for hosting a blog, especially one on MT, but for handling my domain they are awesome.

Anonymous said...

sitelutions.com

domain registration and dns service for $10/year/domain

Anonymous said...

Just in case someone comes through here, my ISP (soon to be former ISP) wholesales name registration at a reasonable price. Since I've known all of them for 15+ years, I know they won't cancel my domain at the least provocation, like some sites.

If you're interested, Email me and I'll direct you their way.