Clouds and VPSes

Yup.

Running costs are only part of the equation. How much environmental damage is done and making new and disposing of obsolete hardware? Surely the extra costs of running old hardware may well be cheaper ...

Much as I dislike the waste-to-power plant just down the road (and even more so because we're a poor East London borough having all of posh West London's waste dumped on us), the fact is that is very environmentally friendly - it means a load of waste is converted efficiently to energy and CO2 rather than inefficiently converted to methane ... and it leaves a load of oil/coal unmined and in the ground.

If you're being green, you need to look at the big picture, not just minimise your costs at the expense of creating even bigger costs elsewhere (cough cough the government pricing our steel industry out of existence cough cough).

Cheers,
Wol