Old laptops in a colo as low cost servers

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

Legitimacy and Business Model

  • Many doubt the service is real or current: originally only a pages.dev site, broken/unused domain, Google Form signup, “still working out logistics” text present for years.
  • Some see it as a PoC, “testing demand,” prank, or even potential scam to collect old laptops; others think it’s just an abandoned idea.
  • Claimed cooperation with Hetzner is questioned, especially since Hetzner colo is paused and strict DC policies on odd hardware are common.
  • Pricing at ~€7/month is criticized as both too high for using your own hardware and too low to cover rack space, power, KVM, and remote-hands labor; back-of-envelope math suggests margins are very thin or negative.

Technical Merits and Drawbacks of Laptop Colo

  • Pros cited:
    • Reuse of e‑waste; many people already use old laptops as homelab servers.
    • Better CPU/RAM/SSD than tiny VPS plans; good power efficiency; integrated screen/keyboard eases initial setup.
    • Cheaper and simpler to ship than servers.
  • Cons cited:
    • No ECC RAM, limited storage expansion, heterogeneous and fragile hardware, poor serviceability.
    • Thermals: many laptops throttle or fail under 24/7 load, especially with lids closed and poor airflow.
    • Lack of standard lights‑out management compared to server IPMI/DRAC; KVM‑over‑IP adds cost.

Fire, Safety, and Datacenter Constraints

  • Repeated concern about large numbers of aging lithium batteries and cheap/unknown power bricks as fire hazards; many DCs ban or severely restrict this.
  • The site claims it may remove or disable batteries and radios, but commenters doubt this fully mitigates risk at scale.

Use Cases and Alternatives

  • Supporters see niche value for:
    • Off‑site backup boxes, small hobby services, or low‑criticality workloads where sudden failure is acceptable.
    • Users with poor residential connectivity or ISP policies hostile to servers.
  • Critics argue that for anything “production‑like,” standard VPS/servers (Hetzner, OVH, DO, Linode, etc.) or normal colo of proper hardware are superior on reliability, density, and manageability.
  • Many suggest simpler alternatives: run the laptop at home with VPN/tunnels (WireGuard, Tailscale, Cloudflare Tunnel), or repurpose old laptops on‑prem rather than shipping them to a DC.