Well to open up the discussion I will say the cloud is great, but Data Centers could be much more efficient and large data centers (like say http://www.equinix.com/ a place I have visited many times and a typical cloud data center) need to improve and use technology like:
http://www.gridpoint.com
to utilize the electrical grid more creatively and cost effectively and proposals like:
http://www.nemertes.com/columns/googles_power_proposal
are a necessity for such centers and seem obvious in hindsight. It hopefully will happen in new Data Centers and old ones will get slowly retrofitted to make the cloud use less power and be even more cost efficient.
Data Centers do have incentives to be efficient. Printer ink is another story corporations make a fortune if the ink is something that people constantly have to buy and refill.
Paper has its uses, but unfortunately ink is a big business that they are rewarded with $$$ if they have inefficient ink usage since they want the consumer to buy lots of ink.
Devices like Kindles and iPads help get more paperless at many levels; this is a great point in history when I can do away with my 28 bookshelves of books and carry it on a Kindle or iPad. Or get rid of my Marvel Graphic Novels and read comics on an iPad - less paper and printing and trees. Or Digital Picture frames eliminate dozens and hundreds of photos that used to be in scrapbooks and hanging on walls.
Software like AutoStore and its competitors can permanently capture paper docuemnts and OCR and store them as graphics in databases and CMS systems, and programmatically capture and manipulate the data thus eliminating copies and physically shipping paper to people.
What uses more power and/or has a bigger carbon footprint, printing or cloud storage?This is a very interesting topic. I haven't seen any documented comparisons between them. Does anyone have more detailed information to share? Or a link that treats the subject?I think both will be with us for quite awhile. So it's not a matter of dissing one and promoting the other. But understanding what the facts are will make it easier for each of us to make our own decisions.
