For those of you who may not know, Rackspace is a U.S. based hosting company, with an office in the UK. You may be checking them out and wondering whether it is worth the money to go with Rackspace. After all they do have some larger clients, they have nice smiley customer service faces on their website, but is the hosting really worth the money they charge?

EcoSwitch were a client of Rackspace until last year and we’ve decided to share our experience with our readers. Unfortunately, the experience wasn’t a great one and their solicitors have now written to us to top it off! Read on…

EcoSwitch initially migrated its website to Rackspace in 2008 to trial their new ‘green hosting’. As an ethical, green lifestyle guide, we wanted to ‘walk the talk’ and make sure that our hosting was powered by 100% Renewable Energy which we were told it was.

We also asked for a dedicated server to ensure that we had 100% up-time.

Initially everything was fine albeit the website loaded surprisingly slow. We asked for assistance with this. Give Rackspace their due, their staff were contactable but that didn’t resolve the problem and they then said they would be increasing costs.

We thought about switching (particularly as we’re an eco switching site!) but first asked for a discount and our Account Manager Flora Kamaldeep (now Flora Sandhu) set up a ‘contra-deal’ over the phone where we were asked to write an independent review about Rackspace’s green credentials, provide them a listing in our green directory and get them traffic to their site.

The objective? To help Rackspace get new traffic to their website and managed green hosting clients. In return, Rackspace agreed to pay EcoSwitch £250 per month (£3K per annum) and EcoSwitch would pay Rackspace £322 or more per month (£3864 per year). This would bring the cost down of hosting to around £70 per month.

Given that many hosting companies such as The Eco Host charge only £65 per month for a dedicated server, are English owned and London based, we seriously thought about switching there and then. But because we were already with Rackspace and they had agreed a contra-deal with us, we didn’t mind paying a few pounds extra per month to stay with Rackspace. We also wanted to help promote Rackspace as they said they were going to become an even greener hosting company in time.

THE WORK ECOSWITCH DID FOR RACKSPACE:

We published the following online review for Rackspace:

And got Rackspace indexed in Google on the front page under their keywords:

And the article is still indexed on the front page of google in 2012 when it was written in 2009! All those years of continued website ranking benefit, traffic and customers for Rackspace – all introduced by EcoSwitch.

EcoSwitch also included Rackspace in the Green Directory:

 

And finally, a front page link from the EcoSwitch site saying ‘Powered by Rackspace’ was created to help Rackspace maximise their traffic and search engine rankings.

THE REWARD? PAYMENT (OR IN THIS CASE NON-PAYMENT) BY RACKSPACE

EcoSwitch invoiced Rackspace for Year 1′s worth of hosting payable at £250 per month but they then ran into problems. We were assured by our Account Manager Flora Kamaldeep that we would be paid and we also chased the matter up with their accounts clerk Mariam Clark but in Year 2, nothing had been resolved.

EcoSwitch continued to pay Rackspace in good faith because £3k was owed by this point and Year 2′s invoice was also due for Directory inclusion and continued hosting of their independent review. They had also asked us for a dedicated link from the front page of our website which we provided at the time to help their website rankings.

Flora Sandhu then got taken off our account and a new person put in charge – John Webb. He said there was no agreement.

EXCUSES FOR NON PAYMENT BY JOHN WEBB OF RACKSPACE…

John Webb then surprised us when he said nothing at all would be paid!

FLORA SANDHU OF RACKSPACE THEN CONTRADICTS HER BOSS JOHN WEBB…

Flora Sandhu (formerly Kamaldeep Sandhu), then sent an e-mail to John Webb and somehow copied in EcoSwitch colleagues contradicting what her boss John Webb had said about there being no agreement.

Internally, Rackspace knew full well what was going on – let’s find any excuse not to pay partners and suppliers shall we?! John Webb probably didn’t expect his junior to confirm in writing that a deal had been reached with EcoSwitch!

Just why is it that some large corporates abuse their position, messing with the lives and cash-flow of small businesses? It reminds me of how Railtrack failed to admit to liability for those two girls that got run down by a train due to their failure to install the correct safety equipment at rail crossings. If Railtrack had just admitted it in the first place, people wouldn’t have been so angry with them!

SETTLEMENT – THE MONEY ON OFFER FROM RACKSPACE (A JOKE?)

To settle the matter, John Webb’s team member Daniel Cunningham then offered £250 one off rather than the £250 per month for 2 years (£6K) and at the same time tried to claim for 3 months of hosting when they had been taking our website offline presumably to try and force our hand. We tried to explain to them that the only reason EcoSwitch were staying with Rackspace was to recover the money owed from them. We pointed out that even if the alleged debt of £1000 owing from EcoSwitch to Rackspace for the final 3 months hosting was a genuine debt, it would still leave Rackspace owing EcoSwitch circa £5K.

EcoSwitch naturally refused the offer which we found insulting, particularly given the hosting of their article we’d provided our end and the new traffic and customers they will have gained from our site over such a long period. Bear in mind, Rackspace would have only had to get one customer like us to cover the cost for our services over two years.

Rackspace then became more difficult and our website went offline altogether damaging the EcoSwitch google rankings, traffic and revenues. Not the kind of treatment you’d expect them to give a ‘partner’, particularly when we are a social enterprise and a much smaller operation than Rackspace given our specialism in the ‘green’ niche of the market.

 

We are not asking for sympathy here but we feel more of a voice for small enterprises up against the fat corporates like Rackspace who get big through trying to crush the small guy. We dislike David vs Goliath battles, hence the need for articles like this to expose those companies that like to try it on in the hope the small guy will just go away. We don’t think so!

ECOSWITCH RESPONSE

With the EcoSwitch website offline and no sign of any payment from Rackspace, we then had no option but to stop paying our monthly invoice. With the loss of goodwill, we moved our website ‘backup file’ (lucky we had it) to another green hosting company (The Eco Host.com). Unlike Rackspace, these guys are genuinely green because they power their whole data center with Renewable Energy as opposed to just planting trees.

Since leaving Rackspace, they have appointed solicitors and are threatening to take EcoSwitch to court. On what basis – we have no idea? We will of course relish the opportunity to defend ourselves and let the truth prevail.

We digress. So is Rackspace green hosting worth the money? In our opinion, a server is a server and as long as a data center has energy efficient servers, backup in place and power it with 100% Renewable Energy, then the only other factor to really consider is – which is the least cost option? Don’t waste your money. All data centers tend to have backups nowadays anyway, so any dedicated server costing more than £100 per month really isn’t worth the money.

We will keep you posted on any significant developments relating to Rackspace. If you want to check out their green credentials (remember they plant trees to make their hosting green), visit Rackspace Green Hosting – you decide if it is worth the money! But we don’t recommend you do any deals with them because the new management may not honour them and their team perhaps aren’t as ‘smiley’ as their adverts first suggest.

Posted under Articles, Computer & Internet

The micro-world of technology is everywhere – it’s a fact. Gizmos and gadgets are getting smaller and smaller, more compact, and, thank goodness, more energy efficient. Once upon a time, if you wanted to take your mobile phone out-and-about on business, then a week spent at the gym buffing-up the strength needed to carry its battery holdall would seem a necessary preliminary. Nowadays its all a little bit more futuristic: there are mobile phones which can fit around your ear, personal planners that will peek out your top pocket, and now there’s a very modern, waste-conscious laptop that can fit in the palm of your hands!

Fit-PC 2 has declared to the technological world that it is ‘the first ultra-low power, full-function computer, with the performance of a standard desktop PC but requiring just 10W max to power it’. This, on average, equates to an energy saving of around 90% when compared to traditional operative laptops. It is no surprise then to see that the product has already received an energy star rating.

The PC unit itself is no bigger than the mouse you need so you can navigate your way across the few inches worth of visual screen. However, the fit-PC 2′s size is the largest factor for its energy saving secret. The entire unit measures in at 10 x 11 x 3cm, which is about the size of a floppy disk or an overly confident drinks coaster. But it is thanks to this ‘revolutionary’ economy of scale that, plain and simple, your new fit-PC can be powered using less energy than an energy-saving light bulb. Which is no small detail!

What is most reassuring about this little laptop is that it still can stand tall with the big kids. The unit is fitted with an Ultra-Low Power Intel Atom Z510/530 Processor, with 1Gb of DDR2 RAM. The unit runs 4 USB ports as well as a mini SD card slot, so uploading photos will be a doddle. And, best of all, if you’re worried about straining your eyes from squinting at the small screen all day long, you can use the line in/line out audio and DVI port to plug it into a larger monitor and run it alongside a wireless keyboard.

Perhaps the only real thing to modify with the fit-PC 2 is how we can see it fitting in with our daily lifestyle. Since the launch of the notepad and then its ever-active sister, the netpad, there have been increasing numbers of tiny laptops popping up in most public spaces – on trains, taxis, coffee house, parks – their versatile applications, small and lightweight size, and practicability edges them above the rest.

The fit-PC 2 has gone that step further. What we can expect to see now are crisp packet sized laptop cases being toted by media professionals throughout the city, and an over excited market, eager to cut their energy waste in order to be the lowest, most eco-friendly laptop out on the market. And right now, the title of Greenest laptop also belongs to the Smallest – introducing the fit-PC 2.

Source: www.fit-pc.co.uk

Posted under Articles, Computer & Internet, Eco Reviews

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The mainstream media and the blogosphere are not opposites, neither are they parallel? They are intertwined and recycle each others content. EcoSwitch is an example of what tries to straddle the spectra by relaying relevant content and presenting in-house opinions on matters that matter. What makes blog voices a strong contender for the attention of information addicts is a combination of independent writing and their focus on specific issues and thereby attracting interested individuals to their stream of posts? The quality is varied of course but the qualitative contributors in the environmental blogotope are many. And one thing that they manage to do quite well is sift through the mass of information already on the internet, compiling a selection to cater to every taste.

One good example -that can be said to quite literally focus on taste- of the redundancy of information -in the sense that the internet offers many paths to the same resource- is the recently set up Price of Meat - Getting serious about Meat and Global Warming (click here to check it out). Below we have listed some of the more recent posts we find particularly interesting:

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10 Popular Studies on Meat and Global Warming for Anyone on the 19th of February 2009

This is a useful post for illustrating meat’s carbon footprint to different people. Do you like exotic food? Know a Prius or SUV owner? Don’t plan on going veg anytime soon? There’s something for everyone. Hopefully, at least one of these ten studies will help you or someone you know to consider eating less meat. Read on here

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Germany‘s Environment Agency: Eat Less Meat to Help the Planet on the 15th of February 2009

Retrieving and reformatting the UK newspaper The Guardian’s article Schnitzel off the menu as Germans are told to cut down on eating meat (read original here), the ‘Price of Meat’ blog offers more readers an alternative reading of the source text. Read it here.

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Eating Less Meat Could Save $20 Trillion on the 14th of February 2009

New Scientist Magazine reports that researchers from the Netherlands have concluded that cutting back on meat could save $20 trillion off the cost of fighting global warming. The original New Scientist article here and the ‘Price of Meat’ blog version here.

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Examplifying it in this post, EcoSwitch is a part of this behaviour as well as offering original content. We are currently in the process of setting up contacts with Universities across the UK and thereby hoping to present recent research and opinions from qualitative writers.

Posted under Climate, Computer & Internet, Environmental News

Today, the human-computer-Internet relationship is heading towards a total integration known as Cloud Computing. The realisation of this concept will have us working directly against servers through our web browsers (incidentally the way this article is produced). What this entails is a complete dependence on Internet access, without which your computer is not even a big calculator any more. You probably think that a computer without Internet access already is ugly and stupid but think again, there are many things you used to do, oblivious of information ubiquity, possibly in a somewhat less distracted manner too.

With the advent of Cloud Computing, we are in the hands of Google and a handful of their competitors; the Internet is being appropriated by gargantuan corporations and it is done under a slogan that adds up to ‘we do it for you, the user.’ And then they will say that making a little bit of money on the side would be nice. That is probably unavoidable, the Google computer network is today the largest in the world and it just keeps growing. Those huge server farms are housed in equally huge cold-storage variety warehouses, refrigeration the number one priority. The impact on Google’s electricity bills is palpable, a good reason for founder Larry Page’s strong interest in renewable energy in general and photovoltaics in particular.

There is a motto at the core of the search engine empire; it used to be DO NO EVIL in big bold letters. Although a wee bit too generous and absolute an affirmation for the contemporary version of their driving force, all things considered they have kept surprisingly faithful to the early day ethos. Larry Page, when still a student at Stanford University in his mid-twenties, said ‘I am going to download the entire Internet.’ So he did, more or less. His initial approximation (‘it shouldn’t take more than week’) was a bit off the mark but Page, a naïve geek who set out to do the impossible – in a certain sense Google actually managed it with their gigantic index – turned into the humble businessman of today. He dreams of cars that drive themselves, of gadgets and techie solutions to all our problems. Sergey Brin, the other half of the Google dynamic duo, is possibly a little more extravagant and Eric Schmidt is the smooth CEO nervous venture capitalists appointed before Ad Sense started bringing in a whole lot of money. The three of them has defined areas of responsibility, striking a fruitful balance between innovation, management and money making.

For your information, an e-mail once on the Google Mail servers is allegedly never deleted even if you put it in the trash two years ago. The convenient sponsored links popping up next to your conversation will put you a click away from a company ready to satisfy obscure desires connected to the content of your text. But the implications for privacy are a subject outside the scope of this article.

All right, back we go to the main theme then.

What Cloud Computing hurts is – apart from your privacy and your computer’s independence – the environment. The Internet is a seducer in many ways and we usually think of it as having a low impact on the health of planet. We think of it as something that lowers paper use, as a way of keeping in touch with distant loved ones and a lot of other things that lowers our carbon footprint. But without the Internet, no low-cost airlines, without the Internet less computers constantly turned on, without the Internet… The list is longer than we commonly think and much more complex. As the masses hook up and perform through browser based operating systems, needless to say, this has consequences. A study, which unfortunately is completely impossible to verify, estimated the energy required to power the Internet amounts too approximately to 10% of the total US consumption. As the Internet grows to incorporate all our digital endeavours, the electricity it devours eats away at the apparent benefits. Ultimately, the blind reliance on service providers with us accepting outrageous End-User Licence Agreements, will take us spiralling away, each of us leaving yet another a long trail of silent and subtle but very, very deep carbon footprints.

Posted under Articles, Climate, Computer & Internet